Set up as recently as July, Afin Bank was formed with the idea of catering to underserved clients, in particular those in the African community. The mortgage offering – which uses a number of non-traditional forms of collateral – is a swerve from how HNW credit is evolving.

Afin Bank, a newly-launched specialist lender driven by a strategy to serve the African community in the UK, has launched a mortgage proposition aimed at high net worth clients.

The offering – called Afin Premier – enables clients to include assets such as pensions, investments, shares, real estate holdings, and even items such as fine art and classic cars, when assessing their affordability for a mortgage.

The move comes just over a week after the bank appointed Tippie Malgwi (pictured below) as its business development director. As well as developing relationships with brokers and the bank’s core diaspora customer base, his remit includes helping Afin shape its new high net worth proposition.

Tippie Malgwi 

Regarding its new mortgage proposition, Afin said Afin Premier could be suitable for “asset rich” customers who may take a lower income than would normally be required for the size of mortgage. When calculating affordability for a mortgage, Afin will consider the applicant’s independently-verified net assets, or a mix of income and verified assets. 

Afin Premier will be available to all the intermediaries the bank works with.

“This is another example of Afin Bank supporting underserved customers. Standard mortgage methodology understandably focuses on income, but for many hign net worth clients their wealth and affordability is in their assets, as opposed to their earnings,” Malgwi said in a statement yesterday. “This means that a customer will benefit from bespoke affordability, taking into account their entire asset base. Lender solutions that only use a highly-automated tick box approach to mortgage applications are unlikely to be flexible enough to consider valuable assets when assessing affordability.”

Afin Premier will be available across the bank’s full range of residential mortgages for first time buyers, home movers and remortgages, for properties in England and Wales. They are available as fixed rate or flexible tracker mortgages, with no early repayment charges on the tracker option. Borrowers can choose repayment or interest-only payment options. 

Afin Bank, launched in July, offers residential and buy-to-let mortgages to underserved customers, such as foreign nationals, the self-employed, professionals and now HNW borrowers. The bank is backed by parent company WAICA Reinsurance Corporation Plc, the Africa-based reinsurance company.

The world of HNW mortages in the UK market continues to evolve. In April last year, this news service reported on a study by Investec which found that 90 per cent of high net worth individuals have had their mortgage applications rejected. As a result, they have had to accept lower loan-to-value (LTV) ratios than they wanted. GSB Private told WealthBriefing in an interview that lenders often do not understand HNW’s complex incomes. This finding suggests that even those with a large amount of wealth can still struggle to obtain credit, particularly if assets are complex, illiqiuid or tied up in various ways. A number of specialists work in HNW mortgage lending in the UK, a topic explored here.