Gen H – Generation Home

Gen H becomes an intermediary-only lender ahead of a proposition-driven 2024

Aspiring homeowners can access Gen H’s market-leading affordability feature, the income booster, via one of the 16,000+ brokers on the lender’s panel

LONDON, UK, 11 March 2024  – When Gen H launched in the UK mortgage market in 2020, it did so with a specific focus: to help everyone become a homeowner, not just those who fit into a narrow box.

In service of this goal, Gen H has today announced an internal restructure as it works to forge deeper partnerships across the industry as an intermediary-only lender. As part of this restructure, Gen H will reshape certain teams to focus their efforts on delivering excellence in end-to-end service alongside Gen H Legal.

At the same time, Gen H has made a series of expert hires including Karen Appleton as Head of Lending and Claire Pratt as Head of Financial Crime Risk. These key hires will help the lender sharpen its propositions and continue its mission to provide solutions for the growing number of people locked out of homeownership.

The lender has also secured additional capital from a combination of new and existing equity investors, including Legal & General. Gen H will continue its successful forward-flow funding arrangement with strategic partner Nottingham Building Society which commenced in late 2022.

This announcement follows a busy start to the year for the lender, which set a new record for application volumes in January and February. Notably, a significant proportion of applications made use of Gen H’s income booster product, signalling that demand for innovative propositions is higher than ever. This can also be said for Gen H Legal, who also had their best ever month since their launch in October 2022. 

Will Rice, CEO at Gen H, said:

“Making homeownership accessible to all has never been a solo endeavour for us; we rely on the talent and commitment of our intermediary panel to help us help aspiring homeowners. The team and I are looking forward to a year focused on strengthening our relationships with our broker partners, delivering innovative new products to market, and working together to  build the fairer housing market that we all deserve.”

Gen H cuts rates across all products by up to 25 bps

This round of cuts follows Gen H’s exciting announcement that it would pivot to become an intermediary-only lender

LONDON, UK, 12 March  2024 — While many major lenders are increasing their rates this week, Gen H will launch  a series of punchy rate reductions to support aspiring first-time buyers, home movers and remortgagers. The new rates will be available from 5.30 pm on Tuesday 12 March.

The latest cuts include:

• 5-year rates up to and including 80% LTV decreasing by 25 bps
• 5-year rates above 80% LTV decreasing by up to 19 bps
• 3-year rates up to and including 80% LTV decreasing by up to 13 bps
• 3-year rates above 80% LTV decreasing by up to 10 bps
• 2-year rates up to and including 80% LTV decreasing by up to 16 bps
• 2-year rates above 80% LTV decreasing by up to 10 bps

With these, the lender will maintain its competitive edge, sitting across page 1 of sourcing for many products especially at higher LTV in line with its first-time buyer focus.

On Monday, the lender announced it would close its direct application channel to become an intermediary-only lender. The lender said this change in focus would allow it to prioritise its important intermediary relationships and deliver new propositions to support those locked out of homeownership. This announcement was met with enthusiasm from the lender’s networks.

In recent weeks, Gen H has made a series of big announcements, including the launch of their new product switching journey which allows brokers to lock in a new product or swap for a lower rate in just a few clicks. The lender also recently streamlined and improved income booster affordability. Gen H’s income booster, launched in 2020, is the smarter, more flexible alternative to a traditional joint borrower sole proprietor product.

Of these most recent rate cuts, Pete Dockar, Gen H’s Chief Commercial Officer said,

“It’s been an interesting week for the mortgage market – and it’s only Tuesday! There were rate increases from big lenders on Monday, but thanks to our nimbler approach we’ve instead been able to make some meaningful reductions. It’s a challenging environment for buyers, so it’s more important than ever that we act fast when we can to equip our intermediary partners with the tools and rates they need to support their clients.”