FR: Tell us a bit about Perenna and its proposition for both brokers and borrowers.
Perenna’s fundamental mission is to create a nation of happy homeowners. We’re focused on bringing accessibility, certainty and stability to UK borrowers through a suite of innovative fixed-rate products – championing fresh thinking in a market that relies heavily on the status quo. There are critically underserved segments of the mortgage market and it is our duty as a sector to ensure everyone can work towards the dream of owning a home.
This means giving people more confidence in what homeownership will actually cost. Whether someone wants the security of a long-term fixed rate or a shorter fixed option with flexibility that still supports affordability, the aim is to help people plan around household budgets and major life decisions. That is especially important for first-time buyers, who often need mortgage products and schemes that reflect how people buy homes today rather than how the market used to work as well as older downsizers who might have different credit circumstances to when they previously bought.
We aim to help brokers do that by offering more ways to solve different client needs. Perenna’s role is to bring useful innovation into a system that has too often defaulted to short-term solutions. That includes giving advisers confidence that they have options for clients seeking flexibility or support in the housing market.
FR: Perenna recently secured FCA and PRA authorisation to accept retail deposits – how will this help you to develop and expand your product range?
Securing authorisation from the FCA and PRA is a major milestone. The practical benefit of retail deposit-taking authorisation is that it strengthens and diversifies how we can fund mortgages. This is important because it gives us greater flexibility as we expand our product range.
From an operational perspective, PRA and FCA authorisation reflects the standards required around governance, controls, liquidity management and conduct, which are important for a bank that wants to scale responsibly. We’ve operated with a warehouse facility in place, and adding retail deposits provides an additional funding channel alongside that. Over time, a more diversified funding stack can help support a wider range of mortgage options for borrower needs while ensuring products remain operationally and economically sustainable.
FR: You partnered with savings and investment platform, Raisin, to launch your retail savings offering – what will the proposition look like?
The Raisin partnership is a straightforward way for us to bring a retail savings proposition to market with a clean, digital customer journey.
Through Raisin, savers can access fixed-term savings accounts with maturities from six months to three years currently, as well as a 95-day notice account. The focus is on clarity; simple products, clear terms, and an application experience that’s designed to be easy to complete and easy to manage. From a bank perspective, retail savings are also a sensible complement to our mortgage proposition. Deposits can provide an additional, stable source of funding alongside other arrangements, supporting a more diversified balance sheet as we offer fixed-rate mortgages across a range of terms. As always, product availability and terms are kept transparent, with suitability decisions resting with the customer.
Overall, it’s about doing two things well. Firstly, giving savers accessible choices, and secondly strengthening the foundations that support sustainable mortgage lending.
FR: Perenna recently launched a five-year fixed rate mortgage range. Tell us about the decision to expand beyond your traditional ‘long-term’ fixed rate range.
Expanding into five-year fixes is about meeting the needs of borrowers and brokers where current preferences sit, while still anchoring on our core principle; reducing unnecessary refinancing risk. Five-year products remain a familiar part of the UK advice process and can be the right fit for customers who want payment certainty and flexibility at the same time. That can be particularly relevant for first-time buyers, including those coming to the market through schemes such as Gen H, whose circumstances may evolve as they establish themselves on the housing ladder.
Broadening our suite of products bolsters our ability to deliver effective and bespoke solutions to brokers and their clients. Where we differ is Perenna’s ERC for the new products (5-15 year fixed) don’t apply if you are moving home or repay the mortgage from your own money – it is only if you remortgage that they become due. The aim is not to move away from long-term certainty, but to provide a credible set of fixed rate choices that brokers can match to client priorities under robust underwriting standards at different interest rate cycle times.
FR: If you could read one headline about the mortgage market in 2026, what would it be?
“UK mortgage market shifts from short-term price chasing to longer-term affordability and payment certainty with flexibilty.”
If that were the direction of travel through 2026, it would suggest the industry is responding to what households have felt in recent years; that frequent refinancing and rate resets can expose borrowers to volatility that’s hard to plan around.
For me, it’s also a headline about operational maturity. A market that takes long-term affordability seriously tends to invest in clearer product options and processes that support advice rather than complexity.
When payment certainty becomes a more mainstream client priority, it creates space for more nuanced conversations about time horizons, risk tolerance, and what “affordable” looks like not just today, but across life stages. That’s the headline that truly matters to brokers.
