Lending rules changed to accommodate older borrowers, now mortgage terms are doing the same writes Anna Mikhailova in yesterday's Sunday Times.
Can you imaging reaching your 100th birthday and receiving your congratulatory message from the Queen - and then having to check whether you have enough money in your account to cover that month’s mortgage bill?
One bank - which can trace its origins back nearly 250 years - is offering a cheaper way for septuagenarians to raise cash.
Founded in 1770, Weatherbys was set up to serve the horse-racing fraternity but did not obtain a banking licence until 1994. It is authorised by the regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, so depositors are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and it lends to homeowners aged 70 and over at Bank of England base rate plus 3.25 percentage points, so the current charge is 3.5%.
The rub is an arrangement fee of 1% of the amount you borrow and a requirement that your net worth in property or shares be at least £1m.
Quentin Marshall, Weatherbys’ deputy head of private banking said: “We see the person, not their age.”
Loans often help to buy a grandchild’s first home, so you could say Weatherbys is betting on the intergenerational sweepstakes. It’s a funny world if an institution founded nearly a quarter of a millennium ago can be described as a “challenger bank”, but his one is coming up fast on the rails.
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