Knowledge Bank creates free tool for brokers to keep on top of lender Covid-19 criteria changes

19 March 2020

In the Government’s daily briefing on 17th March 2020, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced a series of emergency measures to protect households affected by the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The Chancellor said: “Following discussions with industry today, I can announce that for those in difficulty due to coronavirus, mortgage lenders will offer at least a three month mortgage holiday – so that people will not have to pay a penny towards their mortgage while they get back on their feet.”

This is a rapidly unfolding situation and in a very short space of time mortgage lenders are putting in place emergency criteria to accommodate this announcement.

Knowledge Bank, has responded to this by providing brokers and the wider industry with a single point of reference for all criteria and policy relating to the COVID-19 situation.

It has created a completely free tool for brokers to access the information they need to best equip them to deal with the volume of enquiries that they are receiving from their clients.

This tool, like Knowledge Bank, will be updated in real-time by the lenders themselves as they announce their policy changes over the coming days.

Knowledge Bank will also be totally responsive, adding more questions and answers around this subject, as they emerge in the coming days and weeks so brokers always have the clearest picture of the entire situation.

This will save brokers’ valuable time and save them needing to call each individual lender for the answers. It will also reduce the pressure on the lender’s intermediary teams and the unprecedented demand for information that they have experienced in the past couple of days.

Lender’s stances on buy-to-let mortgages will be added to the tool by the end of the week.

Nicola Firth, Founder & CEO of Knowledge Bank said: “As the UK’s largest and most comprehensive mortgage criteria search system, the industry looks to us to provide up-to-date and accurate information on lending policy. It was important to us that we rose to this challenge today in light of the announcements yesterday and on Monday.

“I’m incredibly proud of the team here at Knowledge Bank who have stepped up to that challenge within a day and have liaised with our contacts at the lenders and created a free to use tool for brokers to use to best advise their clients on each lender’s stance and process. We continue with our commitment to support both brokers and lenders in these demanding times and to do everything we can to keep advisers advising.”

Brokers wanting to use the free tool can find it at: https://www.yourknowledgebank.uk/covid19/