In a rapidly evolving market, post-completion experience should not be an afterthought. It should be integral to how we think about mortgage suitability, customer experience and long-term financial wellbeing.
Rachael Hunnisett, Director of Mortgage Distribution, April Mortgages
We spend a great deal of time celebrating the moment a customer gets the keys to their home, whether that’s a first step onto the ladder, their next move, or a well-timed remortgage decision.
With all the excitement of completion, the conversation can sometimes end there: “We’ll see you when your rate is due.”
But completion is not the end of a mortgage journey, it’s the beginning of a long-term financial commitment that sits alongside everything else life brings. What happens after completion is just as important as the decision made before it. As millions of borrowers face refinancing decisions or changes in personal circumstances over the coming years, the question of support throughout the full lifecycle of a mortgage should be encouraged as part of every advice conversation.
Flexibility can be seen as a “nice to have”, but for modern borrowers it is central. Forward-thinking advisors increasingly look beyond the initial product selection and consider how a lender will support their client as life evolves.
Life rarely follows a straight line. Illness, redundancy, caring responsibilities, relationship changes or career breaks are realities many households experience. Recent Mortgage Charter data reflects this; between July 2023 and October 2025, signatory firms reported that around 298,000 mortgages benefited from temporary payment reductions, switches to interest-only or extended terms, with approximately 205,000 borrowers temporarily reducing their monthly payments under Charter options1.
This isn’t simply short-term relief. It shows that some borrowers need flexibility as life unfolds, and this isn’t just due to a one-off pandemic. The requirement for flexibility can show up at multiple stages during the mortgage lifecycle, for a wide number of reasons!
Ongoing servicing is a core element of responsible lending. The advisor’s recommendation doesn’t just shape a transaction; it influences how manageable that mortgage will feel for a household over time.
Servicing isn’t a department at the back of the office!
I see servicing as a continuum, not a silo. The responsibility of both lender and advisor does not begin and end at completion; it spans the life of the mortgage. The regulator rightly expects firms to treat customers fairly when circumstances change. This goes beyond compliance. For borrowers, it’s about confidence, clarity and having options if and when they need them.
When considering where to place a mortgage, advisors may want to consider questions that affect not only the initial recommendation but the customer’s future experience, such as:
- Accessibility provisions and alternative communication formats
- Options to change repayment types, adjust terms or apply payment holidays
- Early support during job loss, health challenges or family change
- Practical help for older borrowers
These are not hypothetical scenarios. They are everyday situations advisors support clients through, and they underpin why post-completion experience can form part of the value discussion alongside rate, criteria and risk appetite.
Why this matters to advisors
From an advisor’s perspective, understanding a lender’s approach to supporting customers after completion, cannot be an optional extra. It helps explain why two mortgages with similar pricing may deliver very different customer outcomes over time.
Borrowers may initially come to market focused on price, but many ultimately choose based on confidence; confidence that the mortgage remains workable if circumstances change, and that help will be available when needed.
Providing a clear and compliant rationale that considers long-term suitability supports better outcomes and strengthens the advisor-client relationship. Advice is not simply about securing a mortgage today at the cheapest price for the short-term, a transactional comparison website can do that.
Advice is about helping a customer live comfortably with their mortgage decision in the years ahead, with a product that best suits their needs now and for the foreseeable future.
Why I care about this
I can think of many occasions in my own life when flexibility from my mortgage lender would have had a significant positive impact on how I navigated the situation. Maternity leave, divorce, sale of a home. That’s why I’m so proud that at April, we’ve built our entire proposition around longer-term value and flexibility; not purely on headline transaction. We do not see engagement as something that happens only when a mortgage becomes ‘due’.
We believe ongoing support and human interaction are part of the lending journey, led by the mortgage advisor. We’ve built our distribution accordingly and worked really hard with advisors before they come onto panel to ensure they understand how our products work post completion. I’m really proud of the work the April team have done on this.
Fundamentals of our product design encourage conversations about the future. Features such as rates reducing automatically as loan-to-value improves create natural opportunities for meaningful conversations throughout the mortgage lifecycle, long after completion. Rather than a single advice moment, it becomes an ongoing relationship between advisor and client.
Servicing is carried out in-house, because we believe customers value consistency and access to people who understand their situation, particularly at emotionally difficult times.
To support this, we are developing tools and resources that bring post-completion support to life: a dedicated servicing hub, case study scenarios, onboarding materials from day one, customer feedback programmes and webinars featuring our servicing specialists. These are designed to help advisors explain the difference between simply arranging a mortgage and supporting a borrower over time. We talk a lot about the value of advice, for me; this begins to quantify what ‘value’ actually means.
In a rapidly evolving market, post-completion experience should not be an afterthought. It should be integral to how we think about mortgage suitability, customer experience and long-term financial wellbeing.
For many borrowers, peace of mind doesn’t come from obtaining a mortgage.
It comes from knowing they can manage it.