In an exclusive interview with Specialist Banking, Ricky Knox, CEO at Tandem (pictured above), revealed that the digital challenger bank was planning to soon go live with new originations for mortgages.
Tandem completed the purchase of Harrods Bank in January this year, which saw the group obtain a banking licence, access to Harrods Bank customers and a £375m mortgage book.
When asked if Tandem was looking at launching mortgage products in the future, Ricky said: “We are, not currently, but will very shortly be live with new originations on the mortgage side [and] underwriting using the Harrods manual underwrite processes.”
Ricky explained that, to begin with, due to them being manual, the mortgages would be “jumbo”.
“In a month or so, we will be opening up to new mortgages,” Ricky said, adding that it would be targeting the £1m-plus market.
“…It's big mortgages, not small mortgages, so not so much designed for our core base.”
In April, Tandem announced the launch of its three fixed saver accounts that enable customers to grow their savings over one, two or three years.
Ricky disclosed that its savings accounts could also help customers save for a deposit.
“…We reckon by the time we get a year or so into that, some of our core customers will have a deposit and then we will start offering them mortgages, initially, probably through the same manual process we are doing with Harrods, but obviously just much smaller mortgages.”
However, Ricky revealed that Tandem's challenge was the need to automate more.
“…We haven't automated mortgage origination, in fact, nobody has,” Ricky claimed.
“That falls under brokers right now, and we will continue to do it through brokers in the short term.”
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