CHL Mortgages is preparing a proposition with a view to return to the market later this year, the company has announced.
The Hampshire-based company was one of the largest providers of buy-to-let mortgages through the late 1990s until 2008.
In a statement the company said: “Rebranded as CHL for Intermediaries to reflect our allegiance to and support of the intermediary market, we are currently creating a proposition and environment for a mid-year market launch.
“Our emerging intermediary teams will be ready to bring our buy-to-let products and services to our intermediary partners, to enhance your client choices and to ensure that we work with you to build partnerships that will be based on a principal where we help you build your businesses so that you can help us build ours.
“Good service, value for money products and personal support will be our destination, and the journey will be defined by the conversations that we have with you as we listen and learn the best way to achieve our joint goals.”
In 2008 the company stopped lending to new customers and said it had no plans to seek new business in 2009.
Over the course of that year the company made two rounds of redundancies, with a fifth of its workforce leaving in one round of job cuts.
At full capacity CHL Mortgages had a mortgage book of more than £6.6bn, which it has been managing since it closed to new business.
Adviser view
Toby Keate, a financial adviser with London-based Taylor James Financial Services, said: “The more competition in the market the better. CHL was a very steady lender back in the mid-2000s.
“It is great news they are focusing on the intermediary market, but having said that I don’t think its clients will be the sort to go directly.”
