Pepper Money has reported that it completed 87% more self-employed mortgages in 2018 than in the previous year,

Last year, Pepper Money introduced several improvements to its proposition for self-employed borrowers, including the use of latest year’s net income in affordability calculations and additional allowable income considerations, such as expenses add-backs, directors’ car allowance, directors’ pension contributions, use of home as office and private health insurance.

The result was the rise of 87% in the number of self-employed completions in 2018 compared to the previous year and an 84% increase in the value of completions.

This trend has continued into 2019, with Pepper Money reporting 26% more self-employed completions and 64% more self-employed DIPs in January this year compared to January 2018.

Paul Adams (pictured), sales director at Pepper Money, said: “The growth of self-employment has been a prominent characteristic of the UK economy in recent years and, as every broker knows, self-employed clients tend to be more interesting cases.

“With so much diversity in the way that business owners draw their income, a cookie cutter approach to self-employed borrowers is rarely going to fully account for their true earnings. This is why we worked hard at Pepper Money to improve our criteria for self-employed applicants and to support this criteria with our team of specialist underwriters.

“The incredible growth in the number of self-employed completions in 2018 shows just how popular these changes have been, and we continue to increase our self-employed volumes as part of the ongoing expansion of our overall business.”