MortgageBrain Classic v3.6 provides a number of enhancements including full integration with Affordability Hub, support for product switching, BTL rental top up (top slicing), lending into retirement and other bug fixes. Full details of all changes are documented below.

Please note that you can expand any of the screenshots by right-clicking them and selecting open in a new tab. The applicable screenshot follows each sentence.

Affordability Hub collects information on property, income, debt, and expenditure all within one standardised form and then sends it to lenders’ affordability calculators. The results, returned within a minute, are collated and displayed in an easy to understand format showing what a lender will potentially lend, allowing advisers to manage the expectations of customers based on the most up-to-date information available.

For full information on Affordability Hub, please visit XXX.

Back to top ^

From the Sourcing tab within MortgageBrain Classic, access Affordability Hub by clicking on the button in the top right hand corner.

If data has already been captured within product sourcing, this will prepopulate across to Affordability Hub. If no data has been captured within product sourcing, then some data items will be returned automatically when Affordability Hub has returned the lender results. The details that can be prepopulated are:

If data has been taken over into Affordability Hub, then you will see the following screen. This confirms the data captured and requires you to acknowledge this and continue.

Affordability Hub will list the mandatory fields that still need to be completed before results can be displayed. Work your way through the form and once completed, click Next to continue.

The next screen allows you to select the lenders you wish to include. There is the ability to Select All or individually select the lenders of choice. Click Next to continue.

Affordability Hub will carry out a quick review on all of the lenders based on the initial data captured in the form. If any lenders are excluded, they are shown on this next screen. The screen also displays those lenders who will be included. Click Next to proceed.

Next, the screen shows guidance on the results that are about to be displayed. Click Calculate to allow Affordability Hub to proceed to the lender calculators.

Progress bars are displayed for all chosen lenders as the results are pulled back into Affordability Hub. The progress bars are then replaced with a graphical representation of the loan required together with the maximum the lender could provide. Further information on each individual lender can be accessed from

this page.

To pull the results of this search through to Mortgage Brain product sourcing, simply click on the red button, as shown below.

You will see a communication screen which confirms the data being pulled back from Affordability Hub into product sourcing. It will progress through each step. Once all steps are completed, you can close down your Browser window and return to product sourcing.

A summary screen will be shown, confirming the number of lenders included in

the search, how many may have failed the affordability test and confirmation of the client data used in the results. By clicking Apply, you can take the results into the scheme list within MortgageBrain Classic.

Moving into the scheme list, a new column will be included titled 'Affordability Result'. Within this column are the results from the Affordability Hub search. Where the lender is blank, this shows that lender isn’t currently included on Affordability Hub. The column can be reordered by clicking on the column heading.

To view the associated background information, simply click Affordability to pop the side bar out and access the affordability information. This displays the LTI, LTP, LTR amounts together with assumptions, exceptions, criteria warnings and ignored information.

The View Affordability Hub Document displays the information recorded on the client together with the results from the lenders. This can be printed and saved to the client file and is also included in the Illustration documentation.

Affordability Hub result references are also within the Filters Letter/Product Selection Report to record that Affordability Hub was used and confirmation of the chosen lender’s affordable loan amount.

Having carried out an Affordability Hub search, if you subsequently amend any of the boxes that have been used in the calculations, a warning box will appear.

Notes: If Affordability Hub is used during the sourcing process, the multiple incomes within sourcing will be ignored for the lenders selected in Affordability Hub. For those lenders not yet on Affordability Hub, then the sourcing multiple incomes will still be applied.

If you select ‘Max borrowing for given deposit’ or ‘Max borrowing for given property price’ before accessing Affordability Hub, a warning box will appear informing you that this option is not applicable if using Affordability Hub.

Back to top ^

Some lenders will not lend if you are planning to retire before the end of the mortgage term. We have introduced support for this by:

The ‘Expected Retirement Age’ field can be found in the Client Details tab as shown below.

If a scheme has been excluded due to the retirement age, then the unmatched schemes will display the reason.

Back to top ^

Some lenders allow applicants to top up the rental shortfall with their salary. To accommodate this, there is now the inclusion of a new filter titled Rental Top Up on the BTL Filters tab. This filter will include both lenders who allow a rental top up and also lenders who don’t. The results are clearly displayed in the scheme list.

When the filter is applied, the scheme list will show an additional column for Rental Shortfall.

Further information on the BTL requirements of each lender can be found within the Details section of the side bar. Select View BTL details to flip the standard information.

If fees have been added these are not included in the rental calculations.

The help text has also been updated to explain the Rental Top Up filter.

Within the Filters letter/Product Selection Report, references have been included as shown below.

Back to top ^

MortgageBrain already has support for retention products but many of the mainstream lenders restrict their remortgage retention products so that they are only available if the loan amount for the new loan is the same as in the current loan. We currently put this restriction in the Scheme Notes text.

Products where the new lender is the same as the current lender, the customer is not moving (so it is a remortgage) and the new loan is the same as the current loan are known as switching products. They are different from standard retention products because there is no need for valuation fees (same lender, same property, no change in loan size), conveyancing fees (same lender and loan amount) or TT fees (same loan

amount).

Changes have been made to the software to support these products by making the outstanding balance field mandatory if ‘Specify Current Lender’ has been selected.

If a product has been excluded then it will state in the reasons for exclusion ‘New loan must be the same as existing loan’.

Back to top ^

When in Browser, the Show Total Cost Over figure is now retained if changed from its default of 5 years.

The help text relating to Cost Over Calculations has been enhanced to include more detail and explanation. This can be found via the Scheme list.

FCA Cost Column displaying Refer

Although the valuation fee was not included in this calculated column, if the valuation fee = refer due to the cost of the property, it was being reflected in the FCA column. This has now been corrected.

Back to top ^