"For brokers trying keep on top of these changes and advise their clients trying to it must feel like a tsunami."
It has also added a raft of new categories for residential and buy-to-let.
The feed was created to help the market, providing brokers with a free of charge, single point of reference for every lender’s criteria, policy and processes relating to the Covid-19 situation.
In the past two weeks there have been almost 3,000 additions and changes to criteria.
Many lenders have introduced additional restrictions on both loan sizes and property values to order to allow applications to proceed using automated valuation models (AVMs). 12 lenders have restricted applications by either property type, such as new build, some have restricted by job type, while 11 lenders that have stopped accepting residential applications altogether.
In addition, ten buy-to-let lenders have also restricted new mortgage applications by property or job type, while 15 buy-to-let lenders have pulled their products altogether.
In order to show the full range of Covid-19 related changes, Knowledge Bank has now updated its free live feed so that brokers can search under a number of categories for residential and buy-to-let relating specifically to Covid-19 policy and processes. The categories include capital and interest to interest-only, product transfer eligibility, late payment fees, furloughed workers, mortgage payment holidays, and temporary LTV restrictions.
After a two-week period that has seen an average of almost 300 changes per day, Knowledge Bank says it is "finally starting to get a littler quieter", with firms deciding on their lending positions.
Nicola Firth, founder and CEO of Knowledge Bank, said: “The number and type of changes we have seen from lenders in the past two weeks are completely off the scale of anything ever seen before. Not only are lenders having to make fundamental changes, they are having to do it while working from home and often with a reduced number of staff. For brokers trying keep on top of these changes and advise their clients trying to it must feel like a tsunami.
“We have added new categories to our free-of-charge ‘COVID-19 Criteria Live Feed’ lender changes in order to play our small part in helping advisers to keep advising, especially at this time when their clients need them most.”
