Nemo to make up to 70 staff redundant

Nemo Personal Finance, part of the Principality, has placed 70 staff in consultation as it looks to reduce business volumes.
The secured loan lender, which employs around 186 staff, says it is still committed to the secured loan market and the decision was made deliberately.
The potential redundancies will come from its loan originator and service areas.
A [...]

Sants confirms that ‘whole of market’ need not include direct mortgage deals

Hector Sants has confirmed the FSA’s definition of ‘whole of market’ takes into account mortgage deals not offered through intermediaries. The comments by Sants, made in a speech to the Building Societies Association today, are the first time a major FSA figure has directly addressed the issue of dual pricing in the mortgage market.
Commenting on [...]

30% increase in new enquiries at Mortgage-1

Midlands based packager Mortgage-1 has seen a 30% increase in new enquiries at their case placement desk in the last 2 weeks and the percentage of enquires which can be placed is now above 95%.
Director of Sales and Operations Alan Waddington told us “Mortgage-1 has a rather unique distribution model in that we deal with [...]

FSA boss warns societies over stress testing

FSA chief executive Hector Sants has told the Building Societies Association Annual Conference in Manchester that mutuals’ stress testing assumptions needed to be much more robust.
He said: “Most of the stress testing performed before last August was based on a firm-specific rating downgrade and, even where firms modelled the closure of some wholesale markets, it [...]

Buy to let rental calculation simplified by RBS

RBS Intermediary Partners has simplified the rental income requirement for its NatWest portfolio of buy-to-let products.
Where previously it had three tiers of cover that were dependent on an applicant’s gross income, from today it will revert to just the one. The requirement now will be for 125% minimum rental cover based on an interest rate [...]

The One Account gets new sales head

Lawrence Della Valle has been appointed as the new the new head of sales for The One account at RBS Intermediary Partners.
Della Valle will be taking over from Mel Buckingham who will be taking up a new position in the RBS Group as head of NatWest Private Banking and lifetime mortgages for retail sales.
Della Valle [...]

Xit2 technology adopted by Praxis

Mortgage packager Praxis has selected Xit2’s Valuation Exchange to manage all its external valuation instructions.
Dudley Aldous, sales and marketing director at Praxis, said: “Xit2 solutions are commonplace throughout the mortgage industry for the simple fact that their system speeds up the entire valuation process. Speed and efficiency are two crucial elements of today’s service-led environment [...]

BSA conference kicks off with a plea to MPC

The Building Societies Association’s Annual Conference has kicked off in Manchester with a plea to the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to take a lead on solving economic problems.
The event started this morning at Manchester Central with a speech from Marc Dodd, money markets director at King & Shaxson Treasury Solutions.
Dodd suggests that although the MPC [...]

Solent Mortgage Services hits 12k mark with Porthole

The number of registered individuals for Solent Mortgage Services Porthole extranet has passed 12,000.
The overall number using the system, which acts as a conduit for online AIPs, application submission and 24/7 case tracking and auditing control, has tripled since the beginning of 2007. The Porthole recorded 826,000 hits in the first quarter of the year [...]

Evaluate to hire 10 more testers

Evaluate Technologies is planning to double the size of its internal testing team by hiring 10 more testers with underwriting experience.
Evaluate is currently focused on the market for sourcing and applying for specialist mortgages automating a manual process and delivering benefits for lenders, intermediaries and their clients. The planned expansion will enable Evaluate to deliver [...]