A fast track remortgage was once seen as an easy way to get a mortgage with no proof of an income. But, this is not what they were intended for and not what they should be used for. Who then, would benefit from the fast track service?
A fast track mortgage is straightforwardly a way of getting through the remortgage application process more quickly. The idea is that the lender does not require the borrower to prove their income. This is not the same as a self-certified remortgage where the proof is not needed because the borrower has numerous sources of income.
With a fast track mortgage the idea is that the lender has scored the borrower within the credit scoring system and the score is so high that they do not count as much of a credit risk. Maybe the amount they want to borrow is also a small fraction of the property value and well below the maximum borrowing level.
In these cases, the lender might offer to fast track the remortgage process to speed up the process. In reality, this is not always as simple as it sounds. Even if the offer of a fast track is there with the promise of hastening the process, recent lending problems have scared numerous lenders and now the process is far from what it is advertised as.
The theory is that if you are a good credit risk and borrowing within your means, get the remortgage loan sorted quickly and everyone is happy. But then people started applying for fast track mortgages because they were not able to prove their incomes. So it became necessary to start randomly checking applications to be certain that that the borrowers might prove their income, if needed.
Some lenders merely randomly take a percentage of applications and request that they prove their incomes. But others request that all applications prove their incomes to the remortgage brokers. This seems slightly pointless - if you have to prove your income to your broker, then could equally well pass on the details to the actual lender.
This means that in reality the only beneficiary of the fast track process becomes the lender of the money. They do not need to employ so numerous people checking and cross checking the income details on mortgage applications. It saves them a pile of cash, but the rest of us go through the entire process still.
But, if you do still want to apply for a fast track remortgage, then who might they be suitable for? Well, you would need a perfect credit report so that your credit score is as high as likely. It might also help if you are not borrowing the maximum you could - both in terms of relative to your provable income and in terms of the value of the property you are buying.
But, you should not consider a fast track mortgage just because you think that you might stay away from proving your income. This is unlikely to be the case as you will nearly certainly have to prove it somewhere!