A year ago, launching a true, no strings attached, 100% LTV mortgage felt like swimming against the tide.
"That’s not the way things are done here...", "too risky...", "too hard to fund...", "too difficult to manage".
That was the consensus.
But the real issue wasn’t 100% lending itself. It was how those products had been designed in the past.
At April Mortgages, we took a different view. Not “should this exist?” but “what would it take to make it work responsibly in today’s market?”
Twelve months on, the answer is clear: it could work, if you built it differently.
Access, not affordability, is the real problem
The traditional narrative assumes high-LTV borrowing is inherently dangerous. But that overlooks a critical shift.
Today’s first-time buyers can often afford a mortgage, but they just can’t save fast enough for a deposit while covering rent and living costs.
That distinction matters.
It reframes the challenge from risk avoidance to product design: how do you create a structure that supports long-term sustainability from day one?
At 100% LTV, stability matters most
If you’re lending at 100%, the biggest risk isn’t day-one affordability. It’s what happens next.
Historically, short-term fixes exposed borrowers to refinancing risk and payment shocks. That’s a fragile model, particularly with no equity buffer.
We took a different approach: longer-term certainty, combined with real flexibility.
That means features like:
• No ERCs on selling your home or redeeming with personal funds,
• Uncapped overpayments,
• Automatic rate reductions as LTV improves,
• Multiple procurement fees for advisers.
These aren’t add ons - they’re core to making the model work helping customers adapt, reduce risk over time, and actively manage their mortgage.
Challenging industry assumptions
One of the biggest surprises has been how outdated some market assumptions are.
There’s a long-held belief that high-LTV borrowers need short-term fixes to maintain flexibility if their circumstances change.
In reality, they are often the borrowers who value certainty the most.
Knowing what your payment will be for the longer-term reduces anxiety, improves planning, and creates stability. Five years can help. 10 years can be transformational.
Crucially, certainty and flexibility are not mutually exclusive if you design for both. After a successful first year in the no deposit space, we now have the evidence to prove it.
Over the past year, around 60% of no deposit applications have been accepted, across a wide range of customers. Young and old. Single and joint. Employed and self-employed.
More importantly, we’ve seen real impact:
• Generally, these are not high-fliers: they’re people with solid credit records, stable incomes and the ability to afford a mortgage, but without a realistic route to saving a deposit.
• Advisers reopening conversations previously written off.
• Customers who believed ownership was out of reach getting a viable route in.
This was never about headlines. It was about creating something for advisers that was usable, scalable and responsible.
Advice has never mattered more
Products like this demand proper advice.
Longer-term fixed rates and 100% borrowing will not be suitable for every customer, which is why advice and suitability assessments remain critical.
They require conversations about longer-term affordability, resilience, and life changes, not just initial rates.
Encouragingly, more advisers are leaning into that broader discussion. And that’s a positive shift for the industry.
The bigger lesson
The mortgage market has become very good at incremental tweaks. But some challenges require more fundamental change.
Responsible 100% lending isn’t an oxymoron. Poor design is the real risk.
Twelve months on, one thing is clear: the demand was always there, the market just needed a product built to meet it and an adviser community with the knowledge and curiosity to discuss it.
We’ve learned a lot and are already thinking about where we take the proposition next.
Watch this space.
