Retirement Interest Only, one year on

It’s been a year since we became the first national high street lender to launch Retirement Interest Only (RIO) mortgages.

We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved so far and wanted to share a few highlights:

• We’re the only lender to offer no product fee fixed rate products.
• In response to customer and intermediary feedback, we introduced new two and 10 year fee free products to the range.
• To satisfy customer need, we launched 10 and 15 year fixed rate products - the first and only national high street lender to do so.
• We improved criteria - accepting income drawdown pensions and self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) in the affordability assessment to continue to help more customers.
• We’ve seen an 89% increase in the number of applications in the first six months of 2019 compared to the last six months of 2018[i].

New 15 year RIO product

Following strong demand from later life borrowers for longer term fixed rates, we’ve launched two new 15 year products. This is another market first for us, demonstrating our commitment to meeting your clients’ needs.

Need a recap on our RIO mortgages?

RIO mortgages enable borrowers to use the sale of their home to repay their mortgage balance, which will usually happen when they move into long-term care or on death.

It’s important to remember that RIO is different to both a standard Interest Only mortgage and a Lifetime Equity Release mortgage. It’s not a replacement for either but offers an alternative product solution. As a RIO mortgage doesn’t allow the interest to be rolled up, your clients must be able to make the interest only payments for the life of the mortgage.

Whether your clients want to release equity without the cost of interest roll up, maintain an existing Interest Only mortgage or take a new loan, our RIO mortgages could help.

Key criteria:

• To apply, your client must be between 55 and 80 years old
• No maximum term
• Maximum LTV is 55%
• No minimum equity required
• Maximum of two applicants
• Available on an interest only basis
• Sale of property is the only repayment method

Supporting you

It’s important to us that we support you and your clients, that’s why we have lots of resources available on our RIO Hub.

If you need any additional support or have any questions, your dedicated BDM will be happy to help.

Or why not try speaking to our office based BDM team via our Broker Chat – just click on the tab on the right hand side of the page to begin a chat.

[i] Number of applications submitted from 30^th July to 31^st December 2018 vs 1^st January to 19^th June 2019. Weighted average (of application numbers)