Barclays' acquisition of Standard Life Bank

will mean one less active player in the mortgage market next year

Ray Boulger of leading UK mortgage broker John Charcol comments on the news that Barclays is acquiring Standard Life Bank: "Today's announcement isn't great news for consumers, as it means that one of the dwindling number of brands still active in the mortgage market may well disappear next year when the sale is concluded.

Standard Life Bank is one of the few lenders still offering mortgages with fixed rates for longer than 5 years and is also one of a relatively small number of lenders still in the Buy-to-Let market.

It is still a young bank, having been launched only 11 years ago, but has been innovative, with one of its initial products being a 25 year capped rate mortgage.

However, its rates have been uncompetitive for some time, which is an indication it currently has little appetite to lend.

"With outstanding mortgage balances of GBP8.8bn Standard Life Bank only has about 0.7% of total UK residential mortgage balances but its average indexed LTV of 48% indicates a good quality book.

Even though Standard Life offered mortgages to 100% LTV it only offered these to a fairly limited range of professionals and so I would expect even its high LTV book to be of good quality.

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