Lending exec's experience encouraged him to launch mortgages for foreign nationals who struggle to borrow
As intermediary sales director for the recently launched Afin Bank, James Briggs (pictured) is relishing the challenge of helping establish a new specialist lender. But he has a personal reason that encouraged him to join Afin Bank after four years with the long-established Together Money.
“I lost my dad to cancer a couple of years ago,” Briggs told Mortgage Introducer. “He was in The Christie hospital in Manchester and the doctors and nurses were mostly West African. They were absolutely fantastic and, if anything, that experience nudged me over the edge, to take this job, for those people, and to get on this journey, because those were the guys who looked after my old man in his last days and weeks.
“Very few lenders want to lend to them, so they're still renting. It's easy for established lenders who are hitting their targets and banks that rely on credit scores just to say, ‘We don't need those cases.’ But they're not cases, they're people, and they're people who add a lot of value. So yes, we want to support them. It's so important.”
Having secured full approval from the financial regulators to offer residential and buy-to-let mortgages, Afin Bank’s products are designed for people from the African diaspora, and other foreign nationals in the UK, who struggle to borrow. These are underserved customers, who have an overseas passport, have been in the country for at least six months and who hold a valid visa to work in the UK, but who face a challenge to get a mortgage from mainstream lenders. Afin Bank’s own research found that 87% of Africans in the UK say they have been turned down for a mortgage, with 41% believing this was due to their visa status and 30% believing it was because of a lack of UK credit history.
“We really rely on these clients as a country,” Briggs said. “You've only got to visit the NHS, a care home or walk past a big construction development in the capital to know that we’d be in trouble without them. We should be grateful, and I don't think we are always that grateful as a nation. There’s a real mix of people coming. So we have nurses in the NHS who are on more modest incomes, and we've got professionals coming over to work in the financial services industry or IT contractors, who are earning decent money.
“We've accepted these clients into the UK with open arms, granted them a visa, and it's a two way street. They want to be here, but we also need them and they add a lot of value to the economy. They have no options on the high street and even in the specialist lending market, there are not that many lenders who will lend to clients who don't have indefinite leave to remain in the UK.”
He continued: “Talking to members of these communities, there’s actually quite a high financial bar to coming to the UK. These are hard-working individuals who are paying a lot of money to come over here. The cost of a visa itself, the cost of having a solicitor act on your behalf and the requirement for the immigration health surcharge. They're making an investment, yet with the financial challenge of a high cost of living, it makes it really difficult for some of these clients to save for deposits.”
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Not competing with the high street
None of Afin Bank’s lending is based on a credit score. “It does take longer, it needs more human interaction and that's not a high street model, it's a specialist lending model,” Briggs explained. “The complexities around visas require an experienced underwriter. We're not here to compete with the high street, we’re here to help clients who fall outside of its automated credit scoring. From a financial services point of view, they don't always feel that appreciated, and that's feedback we've had directly from communities over here. They're concerned about credit scoring, they're concerned about affordability, they're concerned about what deposits are going to be acceptable for lenders. It’s really opened my eyes and given me a unique insight.”
With political pressure building to tighten up on immigration, is Briggs concerned that this could impact Afin Bank’s business model long term? “There's a huge pool already here – 10mn people from other countries living in the UK,” he said. “Putting the political chatter and arguing to one side, a decline in the birth rate and the needs of the country will continue to drive clients here. So, I'm not worried about that at all.”
