CHL arrears below industry average

Earlier this month the CML revealed its Q3 arrears and possession figures. The number of buy-to-let mortgages more than three months in arrears declined from 28,300 to 26,300.

This figure represents 1.37% of total arrears and adding in the flow from receivers at 0.47% and of all repossessions at 0.22% gives the overall industry average as 2.14%.

This is 0.43% above CHL Mortgages’ figure for arrears. This is down from the second quarter difference of 0.53% however CHL said it still believed the figure showed ongoing strength of its in-house collections strategy and processes, plus its asset management programme.

CHL attributed the narrowing of the gap to the strong new business growth in the buy-to-let sector during Q3.

Bob Young, managing director at CHL Mortgages, said: “Once again we are able to show our arrears levels out-performing the national figure and, while the gap has narrowed slightly, this is still a significant 43bps difference.

“We are particularly proud of our work in this area especially as we continue to manage a book with over 44,000 live mortgage accounts.”

Young said that CHL’s emphasis would remain on delivering the human touch to its borrowers and working with them through any potential and/or ongoing payment difficulties they may have.

He added: “We have also benefited greatly from having this expertise in-house and the processes and strategies we put in place a few years ago have continued to work well.

“Our work in this area will continue and we believe that 2011 will close with our arrears levels at an even lower percentage, our end of October figure was 1.7%, a fitting end to the year particularly for the hard-working and dedicated teams who work on these accounts.”