IVA Mortgages & Remortgages Mortgages PLC has launched a credit repair product specifically designed to help borrowers wanting to satisfy an existing Individual Voluntary Arrangements. The number of IVAs is on the increase in the UK, with 12,228 IVAs being registered in the third quarter of 2006. This is an increase of 117.9% on the same period last year, according to the Insolvency Service. The product will be available on a semi-exclusive basis via a limited number of distributors. There is a choice of a one-year fixed or tracker with rates depending on LTV and status. After 12 months, the borrower can then remortgage away to another lender or back to Mortgages PLC, if that represents best advice, with the introducing intermediaries and packagers earning full procuration fees. Pete Thomson, sales director at Mortgages PLC, says: “There has been a rapid increase in the number of IVAs and this product gives borrowers an opportunity to clean up their credit record and transfer onto a mainstream mortgage in as little as one year. "There are very few mortgage products which cater for borrowers with IVAs and, with most general credit repair products, it’s normal for mortgages to carry early repayment periods of 2-3 years.” For IVA Mortgage & Remortgage apply here. Sub-prime & Bad Credit Mortgages Scarborough is to offer its sub-prime products to the wider broker market earlier than planned. Scarborough Specialist Mortgages is planning to make its new sub-prime and bad credit remortgage products available to all brokers. The product range offers rates ranging from 5.29% on prime loans to 6.49% on adverse buy-to-let mortgages. Tony Burdin, head of group marketing at Scarborough, says: “The extensive market research we carried out in the run up to the launch of SSM was telling us we’d got the formula right.” “The packager associations and key account partners who have been on board with us since launch have been extremely supportive, and are putting a good level of business our way in what are still, really, early days. “However, the feedback we’re getting is that there is a demand for us to expand into the rest of the marketplace, and so we will now do so earlier than planned. “We deliberately did it this way. As with anything new, we wanted to launch our new subsidiary in a controlled way and give it chance to bed in properly before taking it to the whole of the market. “Within its first month, though, SSM has exceeded all our expectations and we are now in a position to roll it out ahead of the New Year deadline we had originally planned.”