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Accord Mortgages reduces residential rates and enhances product range

Journalist: Justin Moy, Contributing Editor

ended 25. July 2023

Accord Mortgages have announced reductions in their residential fixed rates, by as much as 0.45%. Their offset mortgage range has also improved, allowing clients to borrow more using their Boost LTI feature. UK newswire, Newspage, asked brokers for their views, below.

11 responses from the Newspage community

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Ben Tadd
Director at Lucra Mortgages
Accord reducing their residential fixed rates yesterday is hopefully the catalyst for more high street lenders to follow suit. HSBC have also just announced that they are slashing their rates from tomorrow as well. Mortgage borrowers coming off of their fixed rates in the next 6-12 months will be praying that this could be the start of a small domino effect, where more big players in the market start to cut their rates, in order to put themselves in a position to grab a bigger market share before their competitors start to follow suit. The news of inflation coming down last week had a positive knock-on effect on swap rates, and early indications are that this is now starting to make its presence known in the mortgage market. Whether this is the start of a new period of more competitive rates for borrowers is still an unknown at this stage, but mortgage brokers will be full of optimism seeing a small handful of big high street lenders paving the way with rate reductions.
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Darryl Dhoffer
Founder at The Mortgage Geezer
With Accord Mortgages' rate reductions of up to 0.45%, let's be honest, they were hardly punching near the top deals compared to other lenders available. They all have loan books to fill, so currently I see this as an exercise to fill up some of their mortgage bucket they have missed out on during the past few months. Until we see the base rate holding and further reductions in inflation and subsequent SWAP rates, these reductions will be short-lived.
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Justin Moy
Managing Director at EHF Mortgages
After HSBC, Accord is probably the largest lender to make a move on their rates. I think any reductions will be small, and it may be short-term pending the impact of the base rate increases we all expect in the coming weeks. I guess we won't know if Accord or Santander have made the right move just yet, but at least Accord rates are back in line with the market.
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Rohit Kohli
Director at The Mortgage Stop
It's very welcome news, especially with a lender like Accord who offers a range of products to meet wide criteria of circumstances. The big lenders are still increasing rates despite swaps coming off their peaks following last week's inflation figures. I think this should serve as an example as to why people should go to a whole of market mortgage adviser - we can find the best deals from lenders they would not have heard of or have access to. Just like any industry the larger players dictate price and will take advantage of upward trends but always seem to need time to consider before reducing their prices. Realistically I still see a BoE rate rise on the horizon in August but if inflation continues to fall then we may be close to the peak in rates and entering a period of stability.
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Craig Fish
Director at Lodestone Mortgages
Until HSBC's announcement, Accord was so far the only major lender to make such a reduction, which makes me think that their rates were set a little bit higher due to workloads. If we see any more reductions it is likely to be from those lenders who have also recently had a raft of rate increases, also due to workloads.
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Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
This could be the start of some great news for homeowners, but it is all dependent on the Bank of England's next move. If the Bank keep rates on hold, further reductions will come. This will signal they have reached their peak and the only direction from here is down, when the inflation print allows. Those who are really struggling should welcome this news excitedly.
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Elliott Benson
Owner at Sett Mortgages
It's about time someone else jumped in, this should mark the start of a more general reduction in rates after the inflation news and slight drop in swaps. The overall impression I get from lenders is that they want to lend and so I think over the next few weeks we will see them start to fall further with high street lenders. They won't sit back and increase while others are reducing.
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Peter Stamford
Mortgage Expert at Stamford Home Finance
Accord announced they were reducing rates on a number of residential mortgages. Finally, a ray of sunshine peaking through the clouds of this disappointing summer. While the rest of the world has been struggling with a heat wave, here in the UK it has been rain with intermittent showers of mortgage misery. This reduction in rates is a great starting point to rescue the summer, however I'll be waiting until the Bank of England's August base rate decision before I unpack my beachwear.
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Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser at Barnsdale Financial Management
I really hope that we see other lenders follow Accord's lead, not only for the overall benefit of the market but also because Accord won't be able to handle the volumes they may now see if they are left out front on their own. In Tour De France style, Accord has made a solo break away and the question now is will the peloton reel them in, or leave them out front on their own until they explode from the effort?
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Gary Bush
Financial Adviser at MortgageShop.com
It's truly great news to see some High Street lenders reducing their rate offerings based on the positive market feeling now in relation to inflation and what the Bank of England will do in the next meeting. It's humorous however to see that some High Street lenders are still increasing their fixed rates and just shows how out of touch some financial institutions are with public sentiment and strained household budgets. As we have stated before we think that UK fixed rates for the past 6 weeks have been overcooked and it will be good to see some normality returning to the mortgage market.
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Neezam Romjon
Co-Founder at Rebus Financial Services
Accord leads the way again with these rate reductions. This is a huge opportunity for lenders to demonstrate that they are not purely focused on profiteering during a difficult time for mortgage borrowers.

When interest rate rises are announced, we are flooded with product withdrawal emails from lenders. But when there is positive news (such as the inflation figures in June), you could hear a pin drop!

I would really like to see more lenders follow Accord's approach. Will that happen? I think it will take more before we see significant reductions across the market. I hope they prove me wrong!