Existing Customers | FAQ Shelf

Life insurance is not always mandatory when taking out a mortgage. However, having the right protection in place gives you and your family peace of mind knowing that financial help will be available if you are no longer able to provide that security. Don't forget that as well as covering any mortgage borrowing you may also wish to make provisions for ongoing household costs. In addition many policies offer optional critical illness cover which can cover events such as heart attacks and long term illness. Find out more about life insurance.

It's a mortgage where the rate of interest you pay is fixed for an agreed term. So you always know how much your mortgage payments will be during that term even if interest rates go up or down. At the end of the fixed rate term you'll usually revert to the Standard Variable Rate.

With this type of mortgage the rate of interest you pay is normally the NatWest Bank base rate plus a set percentage. If the base rate rises or falls, so will your monthly mortgage payments. Tracker rate mortgages usually have a minimum interest rate. At the end of the tracker term you'll usually revert to the Standard Variable Rate.

APR stands for Annual Percentage Rate. It is there to help you compare the cost of different mortgage deals. It takes into account the amount of interest you will pay, the term of the mortgage and certain other charges, such as product and valuation fee.

You can choose the mortgage that suits you best and get an 'agreement in principle' from a lender. However, your lender won't make a formal mortgage offer until a valuation has been carried out on the property you wish to buy or remortgage.

The official bank rate (also called the Bank of England base rate or BOEBR) is the interest rate that the Bank of England charges banks for secured overnight lending. It is the Government's key interest rate for managing monetary policy.

We understand worrying about paying your mortgage either now or in the future can cause a great deal of stress, but it’s important to talk to us now, so please do get in touch.

You will find our contact details and lots of helpful information on our dedicated ‘Trouble paying your mortgage’ page.

We'll normally write to you around three months before your mortgage deal ends. We'll remind you of your existing deal end date and explain how to go about finding a new deal.

If you do not take any further action to renew deal, you will simply revert to our Standard Variable Rate.

All the information you need to help you determine whether you are eligible to change to a new mortgage deal and how to go about doing this is available on our Switching to a new NatWest mortgage deal page. 

The Higher Lending Charge is a fee that reflects the increased risk to the lender when the loan is a large percentage of the value of the property. (The lender may agree that you can add the Higher Lending Charge to your mortgage, although this means that you will pay interest on it). For NatWest, the Higher Lending Charge rate is only applicable for loans over 90.01% Loan to Value (LTV). We will discuss this with you as part of the mortgage appointment if applicable.

An HLC is not applicable to NewBuy mortgages. 

Most of our products are portable and no Early Repayment Charge (ERC) is applicable, if you have the same borrowing amount or more. To port your mortgage you will need to have a valuation for the new property, meet our credit criteria and port within three months of this.

Moving your mortgage is subject to conditions, please speak to us for further help.

The rates we offer are related to the Bank of England base rate and interest rates in general. As these rates move up and down over time, the rates we can offer you also move up and down.

After you have completed your application with your Mortgage Adviser, it is sent to one of our mortgage underwriters who will review and check all of the information you shared in the application and assess if we are able to offer the mortgage to you.  We might need to get some more information from you at this stage, if we do, we'll call you to let you know. Our underwriters will update you as your application progresses.  

Once the valuation fee has been paid, we will arrange for the valuer to make contact with the seller of the property.  They will agree when the valuation will take place and they usually aim to do this within 48 hours.  We then receive a valuation back within 5 business days from the date that the inspection was carried out.  If we are happy with the details of the valuation we will produce an offer of loan to you within 48 hours. 

You will receive a formal mortgage offer when we have received, assessed all the information we need and your property has achieved a satisfactory valuation report.

If you're a first time buyer, or you are buying a new build, your offer is valid for 6 months. If you're moving home or remortgaging to us, your offer will be valid for 3 months. 

The funds will be released on the requested completion date which your solicitor will inform us of. 

We will send you a welcome letter that tells you when your first payment is due.  If you would like to change the date of your mortgage payment you can do this by calling our mortgage team on
0800 096 9527
minicom 0800 027 1396
or you can go online and make the request - All you need to sign in is your mortgage account number, surname, date of birth and postcode of the property