Specialist lender, West One Loans, has successfully completed a £2.9m complex buy-to-let loan. The lender worked with a landlord who already had outstanding mortgage balances of £7.3m, and provided finance to purchase five standard residential properties and three houses in multiple occupancy (HMO) properties. These eight properties were owned in the borrower’s personal name and the requirement was to transfer them into the limited company that had been formed to hold the portfolio. There were two other lenders also supporting the clients move from personal to limited company structure, benefitting from the portfolio incorporation relief rules.

AJ Bell has announced the appointment of Jamie Ward as the firm’s new head of investment solutions. The investment platform said the move will help continue the growth of its investment business that now manages over £2bn of assets. Ward will be responsible for managing AJ Bell’s investment solutions which encompass its managed portfolios service and range of multi-asset funds. He joins from CRUX Asset Management where he was fund manager on the CRUX UK Core fund.

Paradigm Protect has announced it is launching general insurance (GI) policy review questionnaire templates, as part of a move to support advisers with new FCA rules. This comes as a result of the FCA introducing rules that require home and motor insurance renewal premiums to be set at a price no higher than would be offered to an equivalent customer at new business. Information from Paradigm’s directly authorised protection proposition will cover the background to the rule changes, how the new pricing rules will apply to firms, and what they should do to ensure ongoing compliance.

Foundation Home Loans has announced several improvements to its fee-assisted buy-to-let (BTL) product range. The changes include fee cuts, the introduction of new 80% LTV products, as well as new limited edition specialist fee-assisted products. The specialist lender confirmed that fees for its two and five-year fixed rates in its BTL fee-assisted product range at 75% LTV have been cut by £1,000 from £1,495 to £495. Rates available here are now 3.29% for a two-year fix, and 3.39% for a five-year fix.

Specialist short-term lender, Hope Capital, has announced a double appointment to boost its sales team. Sam Lea has taken up the role of a BDM and will oversee the firm’s cases across the Midlands. Lea began his career in the financial services sector over seven years ago, where he worked in various roles at Dudley Building Society and ML Financial Consultants. Hope Capital has also confirmed that Kim Parker is to join the lender as an internal BDM, after working over 11 years at Barclays.

Share Story: