Halifax, Barclays and HSBC increased selected mortgage rates by up to 0.20% this week, effective 21 July. Halifax removed its sub-4% deals entirely. Barclays’ increases reached 20 basis points on some existing-customer tracker products, its second rise in as many weeks.
NatWest, Nationwide, Coventry and Virgin Money had already moved the week before. Roughly 1,000 products have been withdrawn from the market in the three weeks since tensions in the Middle East escalated.
On a £300,000 mortgage, 0.20% adds around £35 a month, close to £420 a year. Two-year swaps have moved from 3.978% to 4.177% over the past month, five-year from 4.008% to 4.231%.
Fixed rates track swaps and gilt yields, not Bank Rate directly, and that’s why the moves keep coming even with Bank Rate unchanged.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
One of our advisers was mid-conversation with a client on Monday morning when the notification came through.
Halifax, Barclays and HSBC were repricing from the next day. The client hadn’t yet decided; advice had been given a fortnight earlier and the client wanted time to think, which is normal and reasonable.
That morning there was no time left. There was a rate that would be gone by Tuesday, an application that had to be revisited and resubmitted and a client who needed the situation explained well enough to decide within hours instead of weeks.
That’s what a repricing week looks like from inside a mortgage business.
Advice reassessed, suitability rechecked, documentation reissued and an application submitted, on the same day, to the same standard as if there had been three weeks rather than three hours.
“A client asking whether to secure a rate today is really asking about oil prices, swap rates, gilt yields and where the Bank of England goes next.”
A client asking whether to secure a rate today is really asking about oil prices, swap rates, gilt yields and where the Bank of England goes next. Answering that well now requires understanding why lenders are moving, in something close to real time.
One of our senior advisers built himself a tool that tracks Brent crude, swap rates and gilt yields, originally just for his own use, now used by some colleagues.
It doesn’t predict anything. It gives him a clearer read on where pricing pressure is building, so he’s asking the right clients the right questions before a lender notification lands rather than after.
None of that helps if the operational side can’t move at the same pace.
A client agreeing on a Monday morning is worth nothing if the file can’t be reassessed and the application submitted before the rate disappears on Tuesday.
Our CRM is built for exactly this: when a lender reprices, it flags which of our clients are affected and where each one sits in the process, so the team isn’t searching for that information, they’re acting on it.
It’s the reason our advisers can spend Monday morning on the client conversation rather than on working out which files need attention.
Firms without that combination don’t fall over because their advisers gave bad advice.
They fall over because the gap between a client saying yes on Monday and a lender pulling the product on Tuesday gets spent finding the file, not using it.
CPI figures land Wednesday and are expected to ease toward 2.6%, though the energy price cap rise has yet to show up in the numbers.
That won’t stop the next repricing. The businesses that hold up are the ones where the adviser can read the market and the team behind them can move at the same speed the market does.
