We spoke to Kirsty, our Church and Charity Lending Manager about what the Kingdom Bank Lending Team look for when assessing a mortgage application.
Charity number:
Almost all the organisational lending we provide is for charities, in the form of Charitable Trusts, CIOs, or Companies Limited by Guarantee with Charitable Status. All of these types of organisations are registered with the Charity Commission (and Companies House if applicable), so will therefore have a charity number. This is important as it helps us to check the history and finances of the charity and to identify your organisation.
The Charity Commission:
The Charity Commission is a crucial part of how we assess lending prospects. Being able to show up to date annual returns and submissions with the Charity Commission (and Companies House if applicable) demonstrates good governance and responsible organisational management. We would look at your submissions for the past five years, seeing whether they were on time, and looking out for any anomalies or indications you may not be ready for a mortgage.
Financial accounts:
With any charity mortgage application, we look at the past three years of financial accounts. We also examine your year-to-date income and expenditure figures if it has been more than six months since your last financial year end. For us to be able to lend to a charity, you will need to demonstrate you have the funds to afford a mortgage, which we will also stress test. This means we can be confident that if your circumstances were to change, you would be unlikely to struggle with mortgage repayments
Policies:
As a responsible Christian lender, we look for potential borrowers to have certain policies in place. Generally, we would want to see your charity has a whistleblowing policy, reserves policy, and safeguarding policy. We take our role as a partner in Christian work seriously, and we want to encourage a culture of good governance and responsible leadership wherever we can.
If your charity doesn’t have these already, we would want you to begin putting appropriate policies in place for us to consider giving you a mortgage.
Income:
With any lending, we need to be able to see the charity’s income is stable or increasing over the last three years at least. We recognise many churches and charities’ finances were significantly affected during the pandemic, but most should be back on track now. If you are unable to demonstrate a consistent level of income, we would question whether taking on a mortgage is the right decision for your organisation. Along with previous financial accounts, being able to evidence a stable or growing income is a useful tool to see the resilience of the charity’s finances, in turn making them a safer lending prospect.
With any of these requirements, our team are always ready to have a conversation, answer any questions, and give suggestions for ways in which responsible governance can be shown. We love to see ministries growing and flourishing, so want to ensure that a mortgage is the right thing for your organisation.
To find out more about the organisational mortgages Kingdom Bank provides, visit the ‘Borrow’ section of our website.
Your property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
Commercial mortgages are not currently regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and therefore do not have the same protections as regulated personal mortgages. Please contact us for more details if required.