In what is understood to be a unique agreement, the IFS School of Finance has agreed to train and provide accreditation for all underwriting staff at Abbey National.
All underwriting staff will have a choice of two levels of training, Certificate or Diploma. The Certificate level course will be achieved in conjunction with the Abbey National certificate in underwriting and provide a customer services professional level qualification. The Diploma is more suited to those aiming for more senior roles and will involve the Applied Diploma in Corporate Banking.
These developments are sure to make the whole operation better in the future, leading to an improved experience for anyone buying an Abbey National mortgage or any form of insurance for which underwriting is needed.
Alliance and Leicester has announced a new tracker mortgage with a headline rate of less than 6 percent.
The new Alliance and Leicester mortgage is a two year base rate tracker with a 5.98 percent headline rate and a maximum loan to value of 75 percent. There is an arrangement fee of just under GBP1,000 and borrowers can take up to a maximum of GBP1 million.
The typical two year fixed rate mortgage rate has just gone over 7 percent so this sub 6 percent figure is certain to attract keen interest. It offers a real alternative for customers and shows them that the Alliance and Leicester are really doing what they can for customers.
The Halifax House Price Index for April showed a large fall of 1.3 percent, a significant fall in the period of just one month.
Predicting the state of the housing market for the rest of the year the Halifax anticipate an overall fall that will be less than 10 percent, though there will be large differences in this depending on where in the country they are. They expect prices to actually go up in Scotland for example, though houses in the West Midlands and Wales are forecast to see heavier than average price falls.
A Halifax spokesman suggested that the falling prices should be seen against their recent history of strong price rises for several years. In this context house prices can still be seen to be very strong compared with the long term trends.
