The government’s Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) scheme is currently supporting over 12,000 people across the UK as of the latest quarter.
According to the latest statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions, in the last quarter there were 12,444 SMI loans in payment.
This means that there has been a payment record of SMI at some point in the previous three-month period.
SMI is a loan to help pay the interest on a mortgage or other home loan for borrowers on certain benefits.
It will help pay interest on up to £200,000 of a loan or mortgage subject to certain conditions. The interest rate used to calculate SMI is 2.09 per cent and the interest added to the loan is 1.4 per cent.
The loan is repaid with interest when a property is sold or if you’ve transferred ownership of your home.
The majority were recorded in North West at 1,841, followed by South East at 1,448 and London at 1,376.
The total amount of SMI loans in payment is slightly down on the previous quarter, which came to 12,845.
It is also down on the same periods in from 2019 to 2021, which came to 16,280, 15,249 and 14,184 respectively.
The DWP figures revealed that the SMI loan cumulative caseload, which shows the number of households who have received an SMI loan since April 2018 (when SMI became a loan) to the end of the reporting quarter, was 24,048 in the latest quarter.
The number has been steadily growing over the past few years, going from 19,881 for the same period in 2019 to 21,936 in 2020.
It hit 22,829 in the same quarter in 2021.
In the Autumn, Budget Chancellor Jeremy Hunt cut the wait period for SMI from nine months to three months in a bid to support mortgage borrowers.
He also abolished the zero earnings rule so claimants can receive support while in work and on Universal Credit.
At the time, Hunt said that the measures would come into force in the Spring of this year.
