In the following piece, Sakeeb Zaman, CEO and Founder of StrideUp, explores how changing client needs are reshaping the mortgage market and why brokers may need to look beyond conventional solutions to serve the next generation of homebuyers.
The UK mortgage market was built around a borrower that is now increasingly rare: two applicants, salaried employment, a clean and conventional financial history. While that profile undoubtedly still exists, it no longer represents the reality of many people trying to buy a home.
Today’s brokers are working with self-employed applicants whose income varies month to month, multi-generational families pooling resources to get on the ladder, first-time buyers backed by the Bank of Mum and Dad, and a growing number of customers seeking finance that reflects their faith and values. These are not fringe cases, in fact they are significant and a growing share of the market.
The problem is that the systems designed to assess mortgage applications haven’t kept pace. Automated underwriting models and standardised lending criteria were built primarily for the conventional applicant. For many others, they create friction and often, outright rejection simply because their circumstances don’t fit the template.
A freelance designer earning £65,000 a year. A family using a gifted deposit from relatives abroad. A practising Muslim who has limited credit history because she’s avoided credit cards and personal finance. None of these customers is financially irresponsible, but under traditional underwriting, all of them face a harder path than their circumstances warrant.
For brokers, this creates a real commercial problem. The specialist cases that are hardest to place are also the ones growing fastest. If your toolkit only covers conventional lending, you’re already losing clients to the gap between what the market needs and what it can currently access.
Alternative finance providers and fintech-driven underwriting models are beginning to address this by broadening the lens through which financial capability is assessed.
Rather than relying primarily on payslips and credit scores, these models can factor in a wider range of financial behaviours: savings patterns, income consistency over time, household financial dynamics, and asset profiles. The result is a more complete picture of an applicant’s actual position.
For brokers, this matters in practical terms. It means more of your complex cases have a viable route to approval with fewer clients falling through the cracks not because they can’t afford a home, but because the system wasn’t designed with them in mind.
With increasing automation and standardisation in vanilla cases, the brokers best positioned for the next five years are those building fluency in specialist and alternative finance markets now. In practice, that means developing a clear understanding of which lenders are genuinely flexible, including their criteria, processes, and likely timelines.
It also means reframing how clients are qualified, shifting away from “will they pass standard criteria?” towards “what is the right product for their actual situation?” And it means staying across product development in the alternative space.
StrideUp’s recent RMBS deal, the first public shariah-compliant RMBS backed by home purchase plans since 2018, signals that alternative finance products are no longer niche instruments. They are moving from the margins toward a more central role in the UK home finance market, with institutional backing to match.
The key point for financial advisers and customers to understand is that the need has fundamentally changed, but the technology to serve them is catching up. The question for brokers is whether their knowledge and panel access are keeping pace, too.
