Hampshire Trust Bank has altered the lending criteria on its buy-to-let and home in multiple occupation (HMO) five-year fixed rate.

The move will enable customers to potentially borrow more.

Minimum interest cover ratio (ICR) thresholds for residential buy-to-let portfolio landlords have been reduced to 125% for a company and 140% for an individual, with minimum ICR thresholds for HMOs with over six bedrooms dropping to 140% for a company and 155% for an individual.

This comes less than three weeks after the bank increased the loan to value (LTV) ratio to 75% and maximum loan size to £5m on the same product.

In addition, Richard Winston has been appointed as business development manager in the specialist mortgages team. He joins the bank from Mortgages for Business, with previous positions including relationship management roles at Santander and HSBC.

Anna Lewis (pictured), head of sales for specialist mortgages at Hampshire Trust Bank, said: “We are committed to the broker sector and to providing the financial solutions they need. This is the latest enhancement we have made to our buy-to-let and HMO product and we believe this will help our broker partners to better support their portfolio landlord customers. We have more enhancements in the pipeline.

“In addition to improving and developing our products, we are focused on growing our team so we can better support our intermediaries across the country. We are delighted Richard has joined us, he is an excellent addition to our team.”