The once controversial Self Cert mortgage product is being brought back to the UK market from 2016. The product was last seen in the UK in 2008.

Quick Loans Ltd has just announced that it is to bring back the mortgage product due to the increase in demand from the ever growing number of self employed people who have been shut out of the mortgage market by mainstream lenders.

Self Cert mortgages are products which allow applicants (usually the self employed) with no official proof of income to apply for a mortgage. The products are controversial due to the abuse and mis-selling of them in the run up to the sub prime collapse of 2008. Although debate continues as to whether it was the Self Cert products or Mortgage Swaps which were to blame for the banking crisis.

Quick Loans Ltd Director Graeme Wingate says “the problems in the run up to the banking crisis of 2007-08 were unfairly laid at the door of Self Cert mortgages. The majority of Self Cert mortgage users have not defaulted and maintained repayments on time. Removing them removed a legitimate solution to those who were self employed”.

The company says that with certain safeguards they have introduced, fraudulent applications will be detected and removed in the way that they were not previously. The removal of brokers from the application process “we will see a massive reduction in the incentive to falsify documents and exaggerate earnings” the company highlights.

Quick Loans Ltd insists that this isn’t a return back to the old days of the Wild West mortgage approvals. According to them, those days are long gone and probably won’t return to the UK.

The move to return these products to the market is likely to be a concern certain parts of the industry that have long campaigned against their return.

Whilst regulators in the UK are unlikely to be pleased, the company knows that the product’s return will be welcomed by those currently paying more on rent than mortgage repayments solely because they are unable to get a mortgage due to being Self Employed.