Intelligent Finance (IF), the online arm of Halifax, the UK's biggest lender, has come under fire for cashing in on last week's interest-rate rise, reports The Times.
The lender, which specialises in mortgages offset directly against the borrower’s income, is about to impose an increase in its standard variable rate (SVR) of 0.35 percentage points, 0.1 more than the quarter-point base-rate rise. All IF customers will have to pay the new rate from tomorrow. Nick Gardner, of Chase de Vere, the independent mortgage broker, said: “There is no excuse for lenders using a base-rate rise to improve their margins, and we see it far too often. It is not why the Bank of England makes these interest-rate decisions.” The home loans offered by IF allow borrowers t...
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