JustUs courts advisory sector to back P2P residential mortgages

JUSTUS is calling on family offices, discretionary funds and financial advisers to help back its impending peer-to-peer residential mortgage product launch.

The P2P lender has invited these groups to register their interest so they can offer the investments to their clients.

JustUs, which already provides bridging and buy-to-let loans, will offer residential mortgages for home purchase and remortgage alongside its existing products.

Retail investors will be able to invest alongside institutional backers such as pension funds and the loans will be offered over a five-year period.

The platform will use its chief executive Lee Birkett’s mortgage broking firm Moneybrain alongside a restricted network initially for distribution.

Read more: JustUs introduces auto-buy feature

Birkett said the product would help so-called mortgage prisoners, retired borrowers and the self-employed who he said are trapped by outdated rules, as well as first-time buyers who can’t raise the big deposits required.

Birkett said in June that the platform was two to three months away from launching its product after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) gave the green light for P2P lenders to offer residential mortgages by bringing providers in line with existing home finance regulations.

New rules on regulation of the P2P sector, published by FCA last month, said that “from 4 June 2019, [it is] applying the Mortgage and Home Finance Conduct of Business sourcebook (MCOB) and other Handbook requirements to P2P platforms that offer home finance products, where at least one of the investors is not an authorised home finance provider.”