Scottish Widows Bank is part of the Lloyds Banking Group and has been providing financial services to the UK’s market for the last 200 years. In 2015 they decided to extend their lending proposition to professional contractors.
The bank traditionally supports employed professions like solicitors, doctors and accountants but has now agreed to offer contract-based underwriting. Another positive is that they also offer competitive rates to those with larger deposits. Their contractor criteria is very similar to Halifax, who are also part of the Lloyds Banking Group, but with one distinct difference.
They also accept applications from both limited company contractors and PAYE umbrella company contractors.
Scottish Widows are far more flexible towards the industry that the contractor works within, and will accommodate contractors across all sectors.
In addition they offer flexible offset products at market-leading rates. A particularly good feature of the offset mortgage offered by Scottish Widows Bank is the option to have offset savings balances reduce the monthly mortgage payment, or reduce the term of the mortgage.
Many offset mortgages allow one or the other of these options. Scottish Widows Bank will even allow the borrower to switch back and forth between the two up to four times a year, putting the flexibility on offer with this option amongst the best available from mainstream UK lenders.
