Vida has announced changes to its tiering and criteria.

There are now just three tiers: Vida 36, Vida 24, and Vida 6.

The specialist lender claims the newly simplified tiers will assist those with historical adverse or minor blips to get the best products and rates available to them.

Vida has combined their previous Vida 48 and Vida 36 tiers, supporting borrowers with historical CCJs or defaults over three years ago.

All customers qualifying for Vida 36 will now be offered Vida’s lowest range of rates even where unsecured payments of up to £250 in total, helping borrowers who, for example, may have missed a store card or car loan repayment but still have a desire to obtain or switch a mortgage.

Criteria changes include the following:

• Child benefit income accepted up to 100% and tips up to 75%
• Back-to-back remortgages considered within six months
• Enhanced support for non-standard property types
• Cases considered where evidence of self-employed income is up to 18 months old, subject to the relevant bank statements being provided
• Payslips now accepted as evidence of income for contractors working under the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)

Anth Mooney, Vida’s CEO, said: “As the specialist lender, we recognise that sometimes people have a minor blip or historical adverse and we want to give these borrowers as good an opportunity as possible to find a place to call home, which is why we have simplified our credit tiers.

“We are always striving to improve our proposition and in a time of increasing interest rates and high inflation, we want to support people with affordability by increasing the types of income we can accept, alongside other criteria enhancements across residential and buy-to-let.”