It is called Affordability Hub and covers the three main elements needed when sourcing the most appropriate mortgage – the availability of products, criteria and affordability. Affordability Hub ensures that intermediaries can use all these elements to best match a client’s needs to products available.

Over the coming months, Affordability Hub is being rolled out to users of Mortgage Brain’s criteria-based sourcing solution Criteria Hub. After this is completed, it will then be made available to users of the Mortgage Brain Anywhere and Mortgage Brain Classic sourcing systems later in the year.

In each case there will be no added cost for the addition of Affordability Hub. Intermediaries taking advantage of the 90-day free trial of Criteria Hub during this time will also have access to Affordability Hub.

Affordability Hub allows intermediaries to input information about the borrower and property in a standard form. This data is sent to lenders’ affordability calculators and collates the results.

It then provides intermediaries with a comprehensive summary of how much lenders will consider lending as well as recording each stage of the lender’s affordability calculation. This ensures that brokers have a full audit trail to support their advice from a compliance perspective.

There are currently 27 lenders live on Affordability Hub, including Accord, Bank of Ireland, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, NatWest, Santander, Skipton Building Society and Virgin Money. These 27 Lenders account for around 85% of the mortgages sold in the UK.

The Affordability Hub pilot initially commenced with Countrywide and Openwork Advisers. Since then hundreds of users from a host of other intermediary firms have taken part, including Fluent Mortgages, John Charcol and The Right Mortgage Company. During the pilot, intermediaries carried out affordability checks for mortgages in excess of £500 million.

Mark Lofthouse, CEO of Mortgage Brain, said: “The ability to deliver affordability together with product and criteria sourcing enables intermediaries to give the best advice to their customers.

“Throughout the pilot of Affordability Hub, intermediaries have told us that this system has transformed their advice process. The ability to access a single system which provides them with information from a host of lenders around precisely how much they are willing to lend their clients helps to deliver the best advice.”