How brokers can navigate visa rules, thin credit files and tough deposit demands to get more foreign nationals over the line
When foreign professionals arrive in the UK, many are eager to put down roots – but their first steps on the housing ladder can be derailed by confusion, credit “thin files”, and banks demanding eye‑watering deposits. That’s the space Aatif Fazal, owner of specialist brokerage Frida Finance, has chosen to make his own – focusing almost exclusively on mortgages for foreign nationals on skilled worker visas.
Speaking to Mortgage Introducer, Fazal explained how he built his business around this growing segment, what actually makes these cases harder – and how brokers can turn what looks like a problem file into a strongly packaged, lender‑friendly case.
Spotting an untapped market in migration data
Fazal came into the mortgage world just over two years ago, having had no prior experience within the mortgage industry before qualifying. Shut out of employed roles because he lacked experience and caseloads, he took the plunge straight into self‑employment and set about building his own client bank.
At first, he was a classic generalist: taking commercial, bridging, first time buyer, remortgage, buy to let – “any lead that came through”. But conversations with other industry professionals – and with his own clients – pushed him towards a niche.
Helping a handful of foreign nationals who were first‑time buyers on skilled worker visas opened his eyes to a sizeable yet underserved market. These clients had only been in the country for a year or two and often had very limited understanding of the processes and regulations around mortgages in the UK.
At the same time, net migration was hitting record highs in 2023 and 2024 – a macro trend Fazal saw as a clear signal.
The borrower journey: same fundamentals, extra layers
On the surface, the mechanics of the mortgage journey for skilled worker visa holders look familiar.
“It's quite simple. It's the same process as any ordinary first-time buyer,” said Fazal. But the immigration dimension adds complexity from day one.
Brokers must first understand what type of visa their clients are on, including pathways where clients arrive on a student visa, move to a post‑study work visa, and only later convert to a skilled worker visa. Household composition adds further nuance: families often arrive with dependants, such as a non‑sponsoring spouse who is nevertheless working.
“What they often think is that only the husband can get the mortgage, but the wife can't because she's dependent, but that's completely untrue,” Fazal noted. Provided the dependent spouse is working on a permanent contract, they can get a joint mortgage.
The funding side also looks different. Many foreign national clients have deep financial ties to their home country. Deposits might be gifted from family overseas, or come from the sale of property, land or gold back home. That money must be brought into the UK, evidenced and documented to meet AML requirements.
“We have to look into it quite deeply,” he said of tracing and documenting these funds.
Thin credit files – and why home‑country data matters
Another recurring obstacle is the client’s UK credit footprint. Because many skilled workers have only been in the country for less than three years, their UK credit files are thin, without much history in them.
Rather than letting an empty scorecard kill the case, Fazal looks beyond UK borders.
“We have to start backtracking and say ‘can we get your address history from your home country?’” he explained. Most countries have their own credit profiling infrastructure, and pulling a home‑country credit report can give underwriters the confidence they need.
“As the report shows, everything is in good order. That gives underwriters more confidence and a greater appetite to lend,” he said. “It's more about how you package the case, and understanding the bigger picture.”
Looking ahead, Fazal believes technology and policy could go further, suggesting an “international system” that would allow brokers and lenders – with client consent – to access overseas credit data in a standardised way. He points to developed markets such as Australia, with similar scoring systems to the UK, as natural starting points.
“If we can use that data, then it puts us in a stronger position: and [help] lenders to increase their risk appetite,” he argued.
Why ‘execution only’ at the bank is part of the problem
One of the sharpest pain points Fazal sees is at the very beginning of the journey, when borrowers instinctively walk into their bank branch.
“The majority of the high street banks will entertain [lending to foreign professionals], however, they will want a bigger deposit, around 25%,” he said. From the client’s perspective, that figure quickly becomes universal truth: “That automatically triggers in the client's head: ‘Wherever I go, I'm going to need 25%.’”
The issue, Fazal stressed, is that the bank is “not an advice service. It's execution only.” Staff can’t advise on options and will only recommend their own products rather than scan the full market for the most suitable route.
For many would‑be buyers, being told they need 25% is enough to shut the dream down. “Twenty‑five per cent is a big deposit to put down. So that straight away makes the client think, ‘Okay, I can't do it.’”
Where specialist and building society lenders step in
Step away from the high street, and the landscape looks more nuanced.
Smaller building societies and specialist lenders are “looking more into [this] space”, with some prepared to lend at just 5% deposit – provided the borrower has a strong UK credit profile, with at least a year’s residency and a track record of managing basic commitments like credit cards or mobile phone contracts with no missed payments.
“However the majority of the lenders are looking for 10% deposit,” he noted – a world away from the 25% often quoted at the big banks. Yet these options are invisible to clients who never make it beyond their main bank.
For brokers, the challenge – and the opportunity – is to know exactly which of these smaller players will take which type of risk.
Fighting misinformation in the social media age
If the bank experience muddies the water, social media doesn’t always help. Fazal is blunt about the “Wild West” of online content.
“We're living in an era now of TikTok and interest media,” he said. Many foreign national borrowers follow advisers online who are “giving them content on a normal first time buyer within the UK, who's a UK national [with a] British passport”.
“They might think that that bit of information is relevant to them. However, it's not,” he warned.
Broker best practice: know your lenders inside out
For brokers who shy away from these files, the barrier is rarely client complexity alone – it’s also the perception that lender systems simply won’t play ball.
“Out of the 250+ lenders I've got on my panel, only 10 lenders are looking to entertain this type of market,” Fazal explained. That concentration means success depends on deep familiarity with a relatively small group of lenders.
From his point of view, strong advice in this area is built on really knowing the products that are relevant to these borrowers. He stays close to his key lenders, catching up regularly with their BDMs over informal meetings to keep up with changing criteria. He also keeps a detailed criteria sheet of his own, so that when he’s talking to a client he can immediately see which lenders are likely to fit and give them a clear, realistic picture of their options.
Even within that group of 10, the detail matters. “One lender might not accept foreign deposits at all. However, another one will,” he said. One might insist on 12 months remaining on the visa, while another may accept just six months – provided there is evidence it will be extended.
“These are just small little things that you need to be aware of, and you need to be one step ahead of,” he said. “So you know that you are giving solid, good advice to your client.”
Manual underwriting: more work for brokers, better outcomes for clients
Many of Fazal’s clients fall at the first hurdle not because they’re poor risks, but because the system isn’t built around their profile.
With only a year or so in the country, their UK footprint is minimal and automated scorecards quickly shut them out. As he puts it, because many foreign nationals have only been in the UK for 12–18 months, “what is really going to come up from the last six years? Nothing.” As a result, they “fail to meet the internal credit scoring systems” of many lenders – and that’s often when the broker walks away rather than push further.
He’s sympathetic: advisers are under pressure, and a failed score often means extra work – appealing to an underwriter, assembling more context, and spelling out the story behind the case – which some are reluctant to take on. Yet for brokers who really know their panel, this doesn’t have to be the end of the road. Those with a handle on which lenders are open to manual underwriting can route cases straight to an underwriter for a human assessment instead of relying on the system alone.
In practice, that can add a couple of days to secure a decision in principle, and it does require managing expectations – being upfront with the client that their process will look and feel slightly different. But once that manually assessed DIP is in place, Fazal’s view is that the hard part is over: at that point, purchasing can begin in earnest, and the broker’s focus shifts to pulling together the right documents to turn an agreed‑in‑principle decision into a full mortgage offer.
A growing niche – and a test of broker professionalism
Fazal’s decision to focus on skilled workers and foreign nationals has effectively required him to rebuild his business around this cohort – from how he markets himself and the content he puts out on social channels, to how closely he works with BDMs and tracks lender criteria at a detailed level.
That investment is paying off in two ways. First, it gives him access to what he sees as a largely overlooked pool of borrowers shaped by high net migration – people who are often blocked by execution‑only bank models, sparse UK credit histories and confusing or misleading online guidance. At the same time, he’s proving that, with the right technical knowledge, careful case packaging and strong lender relationships, these deals are not only possible but can be some of the most satisfying to place.
His message to the rest of the market is straightforward: these clients shouldn’t be avoided, but they do require brokers to lean in.
In a world where more borrowers arrive with international credit footprints and cross‑border deposits, that level of understanding is likely to become a core part of what whole‑of‑market advice really entails.
