Research from Pepper Money has indicated that the average self-employed mortgage applicant earns £57,592, which the lender explains is nearly double the average earnings for an employed worker.

Pepper Money’s analysis comes from its mortgage completions of around 1,000 self-employed borrowers in 2018.

This compares to the latest median full-time earnings published by the ONS, which puts average employed income at £29,588*.

Pepper Money says it had an even split of self-employed completions across five regions last year, with similar numbers across Hertfordshire, Kent & Essex, London, Midlands, South West, Surrey and Sussex & Hampshire. The lowest percentage of self-employed cases was in the North East.

18% of Pepper Money’s self-employed completions had a record of adverse credit within the last two years.

Paul Adams, sales director at Pepper Money, said: “The growth of self-employment has been a prominent characteristic of the UK economy in recent years and, at Pepper Money, we grew our self-employed lending by 87% in 2018 alone. Self-employed clients tend to be more interesting cases given the diversity in the way that business owners draw their income.

“On top of this, our analysis also shows that, on average, self-employed borrowers earn double the amount earned by full-time employees. So, not only are self-employed cases more common, there is also an opportunity to offer higher value loans where the financial assessment shows it to be affordable.

“This is why we have worked hard at Pepper Money to improve our criteria for self-employed applicants and to support this criteria with our team of specialist underwriters who can help brokers benefit from this growing opportunity.”