Marsden BS enhances expat mortgage criteria

Marsden Building Society has announced a number of changes to its expat mortgage criteria, including removing the minimum income requirement and removing the mandatory employer's reference requirement for buy-to-let cases.

In addition, the Society is reducing documentation requirements for employed and self-employed applicants. Self-employed applicants now only require one year of accounts (two years if top slicing) and employed applicants just require their most recent payslip.

Requirements for additional borrowing requests have been simplified across the Society’s entire mortgage portfolio, making applications easier to submit.

The Marsden has also removed its country exclusions list and will review expat cases based on real time data from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), enabling a more flexible approach to expat lending.

As part of the update, the Society will not accept applications from customers residing in, or with financial links to, countries on the FATF high-risk and increased monitoring (black and grey) lists, available at https://www.fatf-gafi.org/.

Applications are also not accepted from customers residing in EU/EEA countries, due to the absence of service agreements, or from residents of Australia due to legislative restrictions.

Jo Cave, head of mortgages at Marsden Building Society, said: "These changes demonstrate our ongoing commitment to supporting intermediaries with flexible lending solutions and straightforward processes. We've listened to broker feedback and taken steps to reduce unnecessary administration, making it easier to submit and place expat cases with us.

"Combined with our manual underwriting approach, these enhancements give brokers greater flexibility and more opportunities to meet the needs of their expat clients."