HSBC-owned First Direct received five times its normal level of applications recently days after it started offering two-year fixed rate mortgage deals of 4.95%. It pulled its 4.75% two-year fix and replaced it with a less competitive deal.
First Direct’s chief executive, Chris Pilling, said: “The flood of interest in our mortgages has meant we’re taking longer than we’d like to handle applications, especially from non-customers. Rather than increase interest rates dramatically to discourage new applications, we’ve decided to withdraw temporarily from offering mortgages to non-customers until we’ve cleared the backlog.”
Source: UK Mortgages
