NatWest declined mortgage at credit check stage despite excellent credit

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Hi All,

Looking for some advice after a really awful experience with NatWest (so far!)

We have our current mortgage with NatWest and have done for nearly 4 years exactly. We are looking to buy a BTL, and wanted to add an additional £99,000 to our current mortgage to finance this purchase (there is at least £150,000 equity in our property so not an issue on this part) (Also, there is a specific reason that we are going with NatWest to raise these funds, it isn't relevant to go to detail without going completely off topic!!)

I usually use an independent broker, however as we already have a mortgage with NatWest, they wouldn't allow him to complete this application of £99,000 on our behalf and instead we had to go through them. He had done all the affordability calculator, soft credit check etc and all fine and passed but they wouldn't allow him to actually submit a full application on our behalf.

Did the preliminary mortgage assessment with NatWest, all fine and passed. (I should also mention here that at first it initially declined but then she realised she had inputted some information wrong and once corrected it had passed no problem). Couldn't book me in with an appointment with a broker for 3.5 weeks which was frustrating but not the end of the world - seller for BTL we are purchasing was fine to wait. The next day I realised I had completely forgotten about a finance agreement that was in my name, so called to let them know this amount, and he said it had been declined but not based on affordability, but on the credit. I asked him to remove the finance amount as I do have the funds to pay this off in full, and he still said it was declined so was definitely something to do with our credit.

Coming off of this phone call really confused, and irritated as he wasn't exactly the most friendly or helpful of people, I called NatWest back to discuss as I couldn't understand why only 24hrs later I was being declined when of course nothing had changed with myself or my husband's finances/credit scores in that time! The new man offered to just go through and double check everything, and although everything was apparently exactly the same as an hour before, low and behold it passed! This guy said it may have been a system error but obviously couldn't really give us any reason as to why it was declined beforehand.

Fast forward to 3 weeks later when we have had our actual appointment with a broker with NatWest, we've gone through the 2 hour mortgage appointment to then fail at the credit score stage, and as per other posts, he couldn't really give us a reason why! Both myself and my husband have excellent credit scores, no defaults etc. We have contacted Equifax who said the only thing that may have flagged up was that there are 2 finance agreements under my husband's report, which were paid off and completed months ago (one back in Feb 2021, writing this at end of Oct 2021), which although are showing as inactive haven't been marked as "settled" so are essentially showing as active finance agreements, meaning that he has more than the desired number of finance agreements currently live under his name, but as not active shouldn't actually have an impact on his credit score. (His is actually better than mine even with this on there!)

Our independent broker has also had a look at our in depth credit reports, and he is equally as baffled as to why this would decline. Since our initial mortgage with NatWest 4 years ago, our credit scores have not changed (if anything mine has probably become better!). 

Appreciate this is a really specific chain of events that's happened here, but has anyone had issues recently with NatWest flip flopping between accepting and declining someone based on their credit but for no obvious reason!? 

Equifax have recommended we speak to NatWest and show them our in depth credit reports to discuss, but I have no clue if this would help at all? I emailed the NatWest broker and asked and he is even having to look in to who we would need to speak to as they "don't get many declines".

Would appreciate any words of wisdom at this point as to what could be the issue with NatWest, or if anyone has had anything similar recently!? I'm generally a laid back person and not a complainer but I am really not happy with how NatWest have just changed their minds every 5 seconds about whether we can have the money or not!

Thanks in advance

ACG

Are either of you self employed by any chance? 

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ACG said:

Are either of you self employed by any chance? 

Hi ACG, no we aren't! 

Thrugelmir

How much of your own savings are you injecting into the BTL as a deposit? 

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Thrugelmir said:

How much of your own savings are you injecting into the BTL as a deposit? 

Hi Thrugelmir, we aren't - the £99,000 is partly for the deposit on the property, NatWest aren't doing our BTL mortgage, our independent broker is doing this