Accord Mortgages is increasing the income threshold for its highest loan-to-income (LTI) cap from £60,000 to £70,000.

The lender will only allow LTI of five times for household incomes of £70,000 and above, from Wednesday 7 July, as part of changes designed to support lending at higher incomes. All household incomes below £70,000 will be capped at 4.49 times.

The changes will only impact new business and new applications for additional loans, with pipeline cases unaffected.

Nicola Alvarez (pictured), senior manager for new propositions at Accord, said: “We’ve made a difficult decision to increase the threshold with which we apply an LTI cap of five times to make sure we can continue to prudently lend to those with higher household incomes.

“We hope pipeline cases being unaffected will mean the impact to borrowers and customers will be limited.”

The Yorkshire Building Society is also updating its lending policy to mirror Accord’s changes.