You have a client with a case you cannot place. Maybe your network will not let you advise on it, maybe the lender you need does not deal with you directly, maybe it is simply outside what you do every day. The questions below are the ones brokers ask us before they send that first case over.
Short version: you keep your client, we do the specialist work, and you get a straight answer on whether the case is placeable before anybody spends money on a valuation.
We have been placing bridging, commercial, development and specialist buy to let cases for over 25 years. Our team came from valuations, banking and lending. That matters when you need someone to tell you honestly that a deal does not stack, rather than run it up the flagpole and waste three weeks of your client’s time.
If you would rather skip the reading, send us an outline of the case and we will come back within 24 working hours with a clear route forward.
A packager prepares and submits a case to a lender on your behalf, usually to access products or criteria that are not available to you directly. A master broker does that too, but can also advise the client and hold the relationship where you do not have the permissions or the appetite to.
In practice the labels overlap and what matters is the arrangement you pick, not the terminology. We work both ways. You can keep the advice and use us for placement and packaging, or you can refer the client to us and step back.
Yes. That is the whole basis of the arrangement.
Where we deal with your client directly, the contact is limited to the case in hand. We are not going to cross-sell them, market to them, or come back to them next year for their residential remortgage. When the case completes, the relationship goes back to being yours alone. Brokers who send us repeat business do it because that holds up in practice, not because we promise it on a web page.
Referring means you pass the client to us and we advise them. Suitable when your permissions do not cover the product, or when the case needs specialist knowledge you would rather not build for one deal a year.
Packaging means you keep the advice and the client relationship, and we handle lender selection, case preparation and submission, working to you rather than to your client. Suitable when you know the product but want the lender access and the packaging done properly.
Either route, you are paid. The difference is who gives the advice.
Usually yes, and this is one of the most common reasons brokers come to us. If your network restricts what you can advise on, or your permissions do not extend to commercial or bridging, referring the case lets you serve the client without stepping outside your permissions.
You will need to check your own network’s rules on introductions before you start. Networks differ, and some require the arrangement to be registered.
Only if you want us to. We are flexible on this and it is agreed at the start of the case, not assumed. Some brokers want every conversation to go through them. Others want us to take it off their desk entirely. Both work, and you are kept up to date either way.
Whatever the structure, it is confirmed to you in writing when terms are quoted, before you commit the case. No broker should be finding out what they earn after the event.
For commercial and bridge completions, payment is made once fees are received from the customer, where charged, and any payment from the lender has arrived.
The initial consultation and any quotations are free, and your client is under no obligation to proceed. If they go ahead, a fee becomes chargeable, and we are also paid commission by the lender. The actual commission is confirmed in writing on the illustration.
Not much for a first view. Property type and location, what the client is trying to do, the amount required, the timescale, and the exit. Then anything unusual, because the quirks decide which lenders will look at it.
We would rather have five accurate lines than a partial pack. You get a realistic view back within 24 working hours, including what is not going to work and why.
Four things, in our experience:
Registration takes a couple of minutes through Clever+, our broker portal. If you have submitted business to us before you may already be registered, in which case call 0800 316 2224 and we will check.
Through Clever+, 24 hours a day. Your dashboard shows real-time status on everything from an initial enquiry through to completion, and case alerts come through by email and SMS as things move. You can upload documents there too, so the pack stays in one place.
You are told, promptly, with the reason. If it fell down on criteria we will tell you whether another lender would take it or whether the deal simply does not work. If a case is going nowhere, the useful thing we can do is say so early.
The honest answer is that it depends on how often you see them. As a rule of thumb, refer when the case involves any of these:
More detail on what we place: bridging, commercial mortgages, development finance, buy to let, large loans, specialist circumstances and inheritance and probate loans.
The more useful point for you is that part of our panel is not available to brokers directly. Several bridging, development and commercial lenders distribute through intermediaries only, which is a large part of why a case that has nowhere to go on your systems has somewhere to go on ours.
Frequently, though it narrows the panel rather than closing it. What matters is the type, size and age of the adverse, and the product.
On bridging and development finance, the security and the exit carry the case. Credit history still counts, but it counts for less than it would on a residential application, and a client with defaults and a well-evidenced exit can get better terms than a clean client with a vague plan. On buy to let and commercial term lending, adverse has more weight, because the lender is underwriting a longer relationship.
We will tell you which side of the line your client sits on rather than running the case up and hoping.
Not all of them, and the distinction affects your permissions as well as your client’s protections.
Broadly, a loan secured against a property the client or an immediate family member occupies is a regulated mortgage contract. Loans secured against investment property for business purposes generally are not. Commercial mortgages, and some buy to let and bridging loans, are not FCA regulated products. We arrange both regulated and unregulated bridging.
BB Mortgages Limited, trading as Clever Lending, is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under register number 795789. We are a credit broker, not a lender.
Often, yes, particularly if the decline came from an automated system. The recurring pattern is a case that a computer could not model rather than a case that does not work: a director assessed on salary while retained profits sit in the business, a contractor’s day rate annualised wrongly, a property with a commercial element that fell outside residential policy, or a construction type rejected without a human seeing the file.
Specialist lenders underwrite manually. Tell us where the decline came from and why, if you know, and we will tell you whether a different lender changes the answer.
Three market shifts that are changing the cases landing on our desk.
Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026. All assured tenancies in England are now periodic, fixed terms have gone, and possession requires a valid Section 8 ground.
The lending effect is at the margins rather than across the board. Standard, well-run single lets are largely unaffected on criteria. Where it shows up is on cases that were already at the edge of appetite: HMOs, supported living, social housing leases and difficult tenant profiles. Expect more questions about tenancy documentation than you would have had a year ago, and get it in the pack up front.
Around 1.8 million fixed rate mortgages end during 2026, including roughly £49.7 billion of buy to let lending. A lot of that was fixed when the base rate was near zero, and the rent has not moved as far as the rate has.
The result is a steady flow of cases where the client can afford the payment but the property fails the stress test. Lenders commonly require rental cover of 125% for basic rate taxpayers and limited company borrowers, and 145% for higher rate taxpayers holding in personal name, tested at a stressed rate rather than the pay rate. Routes worth checking before you write the case off: a five-year fix, which many lenders stress at a lower rate; top-slicing; a capital reduction at refinance; or a product transfer where a fresh assessment is the problem.
Increasingly, though nothing has changed in law. The current minimum to let in England and Wales is still EPC E. The government intends to require EPC C for private rented homes by 1 October 2030, subject to legislation.
Lenders are positioning ahead of it, with sharper pricing on A to C rated stock and more questions on D and E properties about upgrade plans. Worth raising with any client taking a five-year fix now, because that fix runs past the proposed deadline.
Send us the outline. Property type, what you are trying to do, the amount, and your timescale. We will come back with a straight view on what is realistic, what is not, and exactly why.
Get in touch or call 0800 316 2224.
Email us directly with your enquiry by clicking here or using our email [email protected].
