The Beverley Building Society has made changes to its self-employed mortgage criteria, which will allow company owners who have been in business for as little as a year to buy a home or remortgage.

The mutual said it made these changes to help cater for the growing proportion of people who are choosing to work for themselves and finding it difficult to obtain funds from the many lenders who adopt a tick box decision-making process.

Its criteria includes the following:

• It will consider a minimum of one year’s trading, for applicants with a strong track record in their field
• It allows varied and mixed income types – salary, dividend, net profit, retained profit or a mix of all three
• Loans of up to 95% loan to value are available
• It will consider all types of self-employed status: i.e. sole trader, director of a limited company or part of a limited liability partnership
• It will also take into account a wide range of evidence, including SA302s, tax computations, full accounts or, in some cases, a simple accountant’s reference
• Each application is personally underwritten
• We don’t credit score and provide full end-to-end management of every case

Graham Carter, the Beverley’s head of lending, said: “We’ve identified a gap in the market for the growing number of self-employed people, and we are aiming to fill it with a new set of criteria catering for people running their own business, with a varied range of income sources.

“Our team manage cases end-to-end, personally underwriting each one and taking the time to really understand each borrower’s situation, doing our very best to help them.”