How itsadecline Works

Four steps from a declined mortgage to a specialist lender match. The typical end-to-end timeline is 24 to 72 hours from enquiry to a decision in principle from a lender, provided your documents are ready.

Step 1 — Submit your case

You complete the application form on our homepage. We ask for your estimated property value, your outstanding mortgage and secured debts, the loan amount you need, and what happened with your previous application. This takes around five minutes.

You do not need to have everything perfectly documented at this stage. A good-faith estimate of property value and debt is enough for us to screen whether we can help.

Step 2 — Case review and LTV gate

We review what you submit. The primary hard check is loan-to-value (LTV) — the loan you need divided by your property value. Our panel of specialist lenders operate up to 70% LTV on most adverse-credit and complex-case products. If your requested loan pushes LTV above 70%, we cannot route the case to our panel and we will tell you immediately so you do not pay anything.

If your case is within LTV and the issue behind the decline is something our panel can underwrite (adverse credit, self-employed income, non-standard property, complex affordability), we move you to step 3.

Step 3 — Application fee and terms

If we can help, we ask you to pay a £295 application fee and accept our terms and conditions. This covers the work of packaging your case for a specialist lender — preparing the documents, writing the underwriter-facing summary, and handling the introduction.

The fee is visible and fixed. It is not added to your loan. We do not take a commission from you on completion. We may receive an introduction fee from the lender, which is disclosed in our terms.

Step 4 — Lender match and consultation

We match your case to the specialist lender on our panel most likely to approve it, based on their current criteria. You get a booked consultation with that lender (or with a regulated broker working for that lender) typically within 24 to 48 hours of payment.

From that point onward, the lender or their broker handles everything under their own FCA authorisation: regulated mortgage advice, underwriting, valuation, offer and completion. Our role ends at the introduction.

What happens if we cannot help

If your case fails our screen at step 2 — because LTV is too high, or the scenario needs a product our panel does not cover — we tell you immediately and you pay nothing. We would rather decline a case ourselves than take £295 from someone whose application is going nowhere.

What we do not do

We do not give regulated mortgage advice. We do not make lending decisions. We do not guarantee acceptance — no one honestly can, because the specialist lender still underwrites the file on its merits. What we do is match case to lender so the decision is made on the actual circumstances, not on an automated reject.