In this guide:

Affordability Brain 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.

The three main elements when sourcing the most appropriate mortgage are products available, criteria and affordability. Affordability Brain ensures that advisers can use and combine all these elements to best match a client's needs to products available. Affordability Brain eliminates the need to go to each lender and input the application numerous times, making it quick, accurate and easy.

Currently, the lenders available on Affordability Brain account for around 85% of mortgages sold in the UK.

Results from lenders can include a breakdown of values across three areas for transparency and clarity:

When carrying out a search within Affordability Brain, the lenders will be divided into 4 categories:

Affordable – lenders who will lend the required amount, together with the amount they could offer

Not Affordable – lenders who will not lend the required amount, together with the amount they could offer

Lenders Excluded – lenders who will not lend the required amount, together with the reason why they are excluded

Lenders Failed – lenders who failed the initial search

Affordability Brain development is working on the following areas for future inclusion:

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From the Sourcing tab within Sourcing Brain, access Affordability Brain by clicking on the button on the top right-hand corner.

If data has already been captured within Sourcing Brain, this will prepopulate across to Affordability Brain. However, if no data has been captured as yet within sourcing, then some data items will be returned to sourcing automatically when Affordability Brain returns the lender results. The details that can be prepopulated are:

Prepopulated fields

Having clicked on the Affordability Brain logo from sourcing, if you have never used Affordability Hub before, then you will be taken to the screen below. You will need to ensure that you are registered to use the system. If you are not yet registered, then click on the link below the log in details and you will be taken to the registration screen.

If you are already registered, then once you have entered your login details to the Affordability Hub website, you can request your Browser remembers these details which will negate the need for you to type them in each time. Once you have done this, you will be taken straight into Affordability Brain.

If data has been captured within the sourcing process, then you will see the following screen.

You will need to confirm the data captured by scrolling down this screen and acknowledging the box to continue.

Affordability Brain will then list the mandatory fields that still need to be completed before results can be displayed – you can see these highlighted in the red box below. You must also ensure you enter a reference for your client in the top box.

Then 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 Brain 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.

The fourth screen displays guidance on the results that are about to be displayed. Click Calculate to allow Affordability Brain to proceed to the lender calculators.

Progress bars are displayed for all chosen lenders as the results are pulled back into Affordability Brain.

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 Sourcing Brain, simply click on the red button, as shown below.

This shows a communication screen which confirms the data being pulled back from Affordability Brain into sourcing. You can see it progresses through each step. Once all steps are completed, you can close down your Browser window and return to sourcing.

You will now see a summary screen, as shown below. This will confirm 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, this will allow you to take the results into the scheme list within sourcing.

If you hadn’t collected any sourcing information prior to launching into Affordability Brain, you will also notice on returning back to Sourcing Brain that any relevant information will have prepopulated the specific boxes within sourcing.
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Moving into the scheme list, an additional column is displayed titled Affordability Result. Within this column is displayed the results from the Affordability Brain search. Where the lender is blank, this shows that lender isn’t currently included on Affordability Brain.

The column can be reordered by clicking on the column heading.

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

The View Affordability Brain Report displays the information recorded on the client together with the results from the lenders. It will open up in a separate browser window. The document can be printed and saved to the client file and is also automatically included in the Illustration documentation, which is shown below.

The document is listed within the illustration package of documentation as shown.

Affordability Brain references have also been made within the Product Selection Report (Filters Letter) to record that Affordability Brain was used and confirmation of the chosen lender’s affordable loan amount.

Sourcing Brain provides a timestamp for the Affordability Brain search ensuring that each time you recall a previously saved client, you can visually see when the last Affordability Brain search was carried out.

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

Notes:

If Affordability Brain is used during the sourcing process, the multiple incomes within sourcing will be ignored for the lenders selected in Affordability Brain. For those lenders not yet on Affordability Brain, 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 Brain, a warning box will appear informing you that this option is not applicable if using Affordability Brain.

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