There’s a shift happening in the mortgage market that most small firms aren’t ready for. It’s not about rates. It’s not about the political situation or what happens at the next Bank of England meeting. It’s about who’s coming through the door – and what they need when they get there.
Some 76% of brokers predicted that 2026 will see a further jump in client numbers with imperfect credit records.
The FCA’s mortgage rule review, with its consultation closing this month, proposes giving lenders more flexibility to assess self-employed borrowers, older applicants, and those with historic credit blips.
The direction of travel is clear. The straightforward residential client – steady employment, clean credit, standard income – is increasingly not the whole story. In many firms, they’re not even the majority story anymore.
The issues that have pushed more borrowers into the near-prime category haven’t gone anywhere.
Cost of living pressures have been pronounced and stubborn. The gig economy has created a generation of workers whose income patterns don’t fit neatly into a lender’s standard assessment model.
“The pool of clients who don’t fit the old template is now the mainstream.”
AI is restructuring white-collar employment and pushing more professionals into freelance work. Life expectancy means more people are borrowing well into their sixties and beyond. The pool of clients who don’t fit the old template isn’t shrinking. It’s the mainstream now.
This should be good news for mortgage brokers. Complex clients need advice. They can’t do this themselves on a comparison website. They need someone who understands their situation, knows the lender landscape, and can put together a case that actually works.
The problem is that most small mortgage firms are still operationally built for the straightforward client.
PREDICTABLE ADVICE
The advice process was designed around a predictable sequence – fact find, sourcing, AIP, offer, completion. When the client is self-employed with three years of accounts that tell a complicated story, or a 58-year-old contractor whose income will look very different in retirement, or someone with a county court judgement from five years ago that doesn’t reflect their current financial position – that process needs to be more than a sourcing search and a phone call.
It needs a structured approach to gathering the right information upfront. It needs familiarity with specialist lenders and their individual criteria.
It needs an adviser who is comfortable having a longer, more nuanced conversation rather than moving quickly to a product recommendation. And it needs a firm where that quality of conversation happens consistently – not just when the most experienced person in the room happens to be available.
Most small firms don’t have that. Their best adviser has probably developed the instinct for complex cases over time.
PROCESS MATTERS
But instinct isn’t a process. And a process is what you need when a client walks in with a complicated story, and you want to make sure they get the right outcome regardless of who handles their case.
There’s a commercial reality here too. Complex cases take longer. They require more skill. They carry more risk if handled poorly. But they also command better fees, generate stronger client loyalty, and produce more referrals – because the client who couldn’t get a mortgage anywhere else and found a broker who made it work doesn’t forget that. They tell everyone they know.
The near-prime client, the self-employed client, the later-life borrower – these aren’t problem clients. They’re the clients where advice actually matters, where the broker earns their fee beyond doubt, and where the relationship is built on something more durable than finding the cheapest rate on a sourcing system.
But only if the firm is built to handle them well.
The question for every mortgage firm owner right now isn’t whether more complex clients are coming. They are.
The question is whether your firm has the process, the training, and the systems to serve them properly – every time, not just when your best person happens to be in the room.
The market is changing. The clients are changing. The firms that grow through this period won’t be the ones that keep hoping for straightforward cases. They’ll be the ones that decided to get good at the complicated ones.
