Vida Homeloans has moves to protect the long term future of its business, preserve jobs and support existing customers by withdrawing selected new business products from the market.
The specialist lender cited the ongoing volatility due to the Coronavirus pandemic and limited access to capital markets funding as the reasons for its decision.
As of close of business on Thursday 19 March, Vida Homeloans has temporarily withdrawn the Vida 1, 2 and 3 tiers within its Buy to Let and Residential product ranges. It will continue to offer products on its Buy-to-Let Vida 4, Residential Vida 4 & 5 and Residential Help to Buy Vida 4 & 5 ranges.
Anth Mooney, CEO of Belmont Green Finance, which owns Vida, said: “As challengers to the big traditional players in the UK mortgage market, non-bank lenders like Vida cannot currently access the liquidity facilities announced last week by HM Treasury and the Bank of England.
“As we are treated differently from the high street banks, we have taken swift and decisive action to protect our business. All other non-bank lenders are facing into similarly difficult choices right now, as they weigh the tough challenge of maintaining customer access against the imperative of securing a sustainable future for their people and business. This is an industry wide challenge, not one that we face alone.
“Trading to date in 2020 has been very strong, but with continued uncertainty over the ongoing market impact of COVID-19, we have acted early to conserve liquidity and focus on serving our existing customers at this difficult time. As the picture hopefully becomes clearer in the weeks ahead, we will keep our proposition under review and re-open our full product range for new customers as soon as market conditions allow.”
Louisa Sedgwick, managing director, mortgages, Vida Homeloans, added: “Vida is a prudent and responsible lender and we remain proactive and fully engaged in serving our customers and intermediary partners.
“We are working closely with the intermediary community, industry bodies like IMLA and UK Finance as well as with our close competitors, to ensure that as an industry we come together to do the very best we can to help customers at this difficult time.”