Economic Abuse and Joint Mortgages: What Lenders Can Do Now
Economic Abuse and Joint Mortgages: What Lenders Can Do Now Content note: this episode discusses domestic abuse and economic abuse. Support contacts are at the end of this description. For many survivors of domestic abuse, the abuse carries on after they leave, through the mortgage. Both names stay liable, so a former partner can stop paying, block a sale or remortgage and let arrears build, while the survivor's credit file takes the damage. Surviving Economic Abuse found that one in eight UK women who held a joint mortgage over a two-year period experienced economic abuse through it, which it puts at more than 750,000 people (Opinium survey for Surviving Economic Abuse, September 2024). In this episode of the Digital Disruption podcast, Chris Williams, Partner at Novus, talks to Natalie Ellis, Managing Director of Steel City Mortgages, about economic abuse through joint mortgages and what it means for UK mortgage lenders. Natalie's starting point: a credit report records what happened financially, but it doesn't tell a lender why. She describes clients left with defaults and CCJs caused by someone else's behaviour, who then meet automated declines and have to retell their story to their adviser, the underwriter, the solicitor and the estate agent. Chris links this to the redesign of the mortgage journey now under way. With the survivor's consent, what they disclose could be captured once and travel with the case. Three things lenders can do now: → Train advisers, underwriters, administrators and servicing teams in how economic abuse affects joint mortgages, transfers of equity, arrears and credit scores. This is Natalie's first priority, and she is clear she doesn't want "another CPD annual tick-box exercise". → Build a clear specialist support pathway, so a broker knows who to call and a survivor tells their story once. → Give these cases individual consideration, with a manual review by a trained team before an automated rule declines on a default. Read Natalie's article, "Escaping abuse shouldn't mean a lifetime of mortgage difficulties", in Digital Disruption #22: https://events.novus-strategy.com/digital-disruption-newsletter-archive Chris closes with a message to lenders: "Mortgage lenders, you can definitely do more. We can all do more." Automation should fast-track the right decisions, with a person in the loop for the cases a rule cannot read. Chapters 0:00 Welcome 0:25 How Chris and Natalie met 1:41 How a joint mortgage keeps the abuse going 5:29 What a credit report can't tell a lender 8:35 Why vulnerability flags fall short 9:56 Automation and the risk of the wrong decision faster 13:31 Telling the story once 16:32 Better access for survivors 18:53 What lenders can do now 19:50 Natalie's priority: specialist training 21:48 Chris's recap 23:30 How to contact Natalie, and where to find support 24:32 Close Chris Williams is a Partner at Novus Strategy and leads its strategy and transformation practice, working with UK lenders and building societies on where to invest across the mortgage journey. Natalie Ellis is Managing Director of Steel City Mortgages, a mortgage and protection broker in Sheffield, and has advised on mortgages for more than 20 years: https://www.steelcitymortgages.co.uk If anything in this episode affects you, support is available: IDAS, the Yorkshire domestic abuse charity Natalie supports: https://www.idas.org.uk National Domestic Abuse Helpline, free and open 24 hours, run by Refuge: 0808 2000 247 Surviving Economic Abuse: https://survivingeconomicabuse.org Suggest a topic for a future episode: [email protected] Subscribe to the Digital Disruption newsletter: https://events.novus-strategy.com/newsletter-sign-up Learn more at novus-strategy.com #DigitalDisruption #EconomicAbuse #MortgageLending #UKMortgages #MortgageBrokers #FinancialServices
