The improvements should help customers who rely on bonus income and NHS workers who do overtime, to stretch their affordability further.

When factoring in bonuses, Halifax takes the lower figure of either the latest year’s bonus or the average of the past two year’s bonuses.

Following the latest change, for customers who have changed jobs recently, Halifax will allow a bonus received from a previous employer to be included when calculating the two-year average.

In a further update to its income policy, Halifax will allow two additional forms of overtime to be included for NHS workers.

Overtime can now include hours worked under the Waiting List Initiative – a scheme designed to tackle the NHS backlog.

It can also include hours worked under the Additional Programme Activity scheme, which is a type of pre-agreed overtime.

In its update to brokers, the lender provided an example of how its updated bonus policy works in practice:

For a borrower with a £50,000 bonus for latest year and a £40,000 bonus from the previous year with a different employer, it says:

“We would previously have asked you to key a £25,000 bonus as a 2 year average, including zero bonus for the previous year (£50,000 + £0 = £50,000 divided by 2 = £25,000).

“Now a £45,000 bonus would be keyed (£50,000 + £40,000 = £90,000 divided by 2 = £45,000).”

The update from Halifax comes as Accord today increased its maximum loan size to £2.6m and raised the limit on new-build loan-to-values.