Immediately after the UK’s new chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini” Budget speech last Friday, Atom Bank chief executive Mark Mullen realised the extent of the chaos that was about to be unleashed and got on the phone to his commercial director.
“I asked to be ready to remove our mortgage range from sale because I could see there could be a rush to [lock in fixed rate] mortgages,” said Mullen, whose bank specialises in selling home loans online.
“Contagion can be quite destructive and so our risk was we’d find ourselves swamped with mortgage applications that we don’t have either the capacity or the appetite to write in such a volatile environment.”
