John Webster, business development director for Preferred Mortgages, said the company would still retain its non-conforming products.
“Within the context of growing the business we decided we had to look into broadening our product range,” said Webster. “With the changes in the economy over the last ten years there are fewer serious adverse cases about, so the make up of our customers is changing.”
Webster went on say that Preferred would be releasing the products in the next couple of months and that they were in discussions with their business partners as to the design of loans. He added that so far the feedback from brokers had been very positive.
Rob Clifford, managing director of franchise operation Mortgageforce, said: “The danger for sub-prime specialist lenders moving towards prime is that they are competing with bigger brands. There are also only eight lenders competing for traditional sub-prime, but when you start to move towards the mainstream there are 123.”
Webster said he believed that the Preferred service proposition, where each case is manually underwritten, would give them the edge over high-street brands.
Commenting on the developments Julian Wells, head of marketing at Mortgages plc, said: “There has been a move by lenders towards the ‘near prime’ sector, with traditional sub-prime lenders moving up the lending curve ,while prime lenders have started offering products at the lower end of their curve.”
