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Skydio, the US’s largest drone maker and a supplier to Ukraine’s military, faces a supply chain crisis after Beijing imposed sanctions on the company, including banning Chinese groups from providing it with critical components.
Skydio is rushing to find alternative suppliers after Beijing’s move, which also blocks battery supplies from its sole provider, said people familiar with the situation.
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The drone-maker has sought help from the Biden administration. Chief executive Adam Bry last week met US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell and held discussions with senior officials at the White House.
American officials are concerned about China disrupting US supply chains and provision to Ukraine of drones used in intelligence gathering.
“This is a clarifying moment for the drone industry,” Bry wrote in a note to customers obtained by the Financial Times. “If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours.
“This is an attempt to eliminate the leading American drone company and deepen the world’s dependence on Chinese drone suppliers,” he added.
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The crisis for Skydio underscores the risks facing US companies that rely on China and comes amid concern among foreign businesses about Beijing’s use of security laws to detain their local employees and carry out corporate raids in the country.
China’s sanctions, imposed on October 11, hit several US groups, including privately held Skydio, in retaliation for Washington’s approval of the sale of attack drones to Taiwan. Skydio had recently won a contract with Taiwan’s fire agency.
Beijing imposed the sanctions before Skydio had succeeded in finding alternative suppliers.
One person familiar with the situation said Chinese authorities visited Skydio’s suppliers, including Dongguan Poweramp — a subsidiary of Japan’s TDK that makes drone batteries — and ordered them to sever ties.
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Skydio on Wednesday told its customers it was rationing the number of batteries supplied with drones because of the Chinese move and that it did not expect to have new suppliers until spring.
Skydio is talking to companies in Asia, including in Taiwan. One person familiar with the situation said US officials had contacted Asian allies to discuss ways to help the company. Skydio has also been in touch with Taiwan’s vice-president Hsiao Bi-khim about the issue.
The San Mateo-based group sells to corporate and government customers, including the US military. It said it had sent more than 1,000 drones to Ukraine for intelligence gathering and reconnaissance purposes. The drones have also been used to help document Russian war crimes.
Skydio said its latest model, the X10, was the first US drone to pass Ukrainian electronic warfare tests — meaning they are hard to jam — and that Kyiv had requested thousands of them.
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The Chinese action comes as the US Congress considers legislation that would ban Americans from flying drones made by DJI, the Shenzhen-based company that dominates the global commercial drone industry.
“We suspect Skydio was targeted by Beijing because it is likely seen as a competitor to DJI,” said one US official. “If there is a silver lining, we can use this episode to accelerate our work to diversify drone supply chains away from . . . China.”
US officials said they hoped the Skydio crisis would also raise awareness in the private sector about the danger of having supply chains concentrated in China.
China has in the past restricted supplies of rare earths to try to pressure other countries and recently warned Japan it would block shipments of critical minerals if Tokyo adopted export controls pushed by Washington.
Beijing has in recent years placed sanctions on several US defence companies, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and Anduril Industries, which makes some of the attack drones going to Taiwan.
“While China’s sanctions today target defence and drone manufacturers, tomorrow they will almost certainly expand to other sectors as US-China relations worsen,” said Craig Singleton at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Batteries and rare earths are just the canary in the coal mine.”
The White House, state department and TDK declined to comment.
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In today’s newsletter:
Good morning. China’s exports soared in October and its trade surplus ballooned, official data showed yesterday, just days after Donald Trump won the US presidential election with promises of sweeping tariffs to suppress imports from China.
The bumper export figures are expected to inflame tensions between Trump’s incoming administration and Beijing. The president-elect, a self-described “Tariff Man”, is expected to move quickly and “ruthlessly” in threatening the US’s trading partners with steep levies on their imports once he takes office, say former trade officials and advisers.
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Trump has threatened levies of up to 20 per cent on all imports and 60 per cent on those from China — measures that are more stringent and broader than those deployed during his first term in office.
China’s October export surge was probably partly because “the prospect of a Trump victory” and anticipated tariffs spurred exporters to front-load shipments, said Shuang Ding, head of greater China economic research at Standard Chartered.
Analysts said China’s burgeoning trade surplus — which hit $95.7bn in October compared with forecasts of $75bn — would provoke Trump.
Trump’s victory continues to reverberate around the US and the world — here’s more coverage:
Japan: The country’s top currency diplomat said the government was ready to take action against “excess moves” in the yen as Asian currencies showed further weakness against a resurgent US dollar in the wake of Trump’s victory.
‘Brave new world’: Trump’s re-election threatens to accelerate the end of the US-led postwar order — if not render it irrelevant.
Blame game: Joe Biden called on Americans to “bring down the temperature” in US politics, as Democrats began pointing fingers over Harris’s heavy defeat against Trump. Some critics say the party misread voters.
Sign up for our White House Watch newsletter for more analysis on the far-reaching repercussions of Trump’s second term. And here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:
Economic data: Japan reports household spending for September and Taiwan releases October trade figures. China reports October inflation data on Saturday.
Results: Tata Motors and Sony report earnings.
How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.
Five more top stories
1. Nissan has launched an emergency turnaround plan that includes 9,000 job losses and a voluntary 50 per cent pay cut for chief executive Makoto Uchida after unveiling it had fallen to a quarterly loss. Japan’s third-largest carmaker said it would slash global production capacity by 20 per cent. Read more about the troubles at Nissan.
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2. The US Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point yesterday, marking a decline in the pace from September’s half-point cut. Its chair Jay Powell hailed the strength of the US economy and said he would not resign if Donald Trump asked him to.
3.Bangladesh has staved off more power cuts by India’s Adani Group after supplying the conglomerate with a new credit letter and reassurances that it will clear its mounting electricity bill. Billionaire Gautam Adani’s group began reducing electricity supplies to Bangladesh last week over a backlog of overdue payments estimated by the group to be about $850mn.
4. German opposition leader Friedrich Merz has called for snap elections as early as January following the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s government. Merz rejected the timetable set out by the German chancellor after he broke up the governing coalition, plunging Europe’s largest economy into political turmoil.
5. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said it would be “unacceptable” and “suicidal” for Europe to ask Ukraine to make concessions to Russia in exchange for a potential peace deal. The Ukrainian president’s comments came at a European security summit hosted by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has broken with EU and Nato policy to push for immediate peace.
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The Big Read
In the end, it wasn’t even close. A presidential election long forecast to dance on a knife’s edge very quickly turned into a rout for Donald Trump. Today’s Big Read has the five maps and charts that show how the Republican candidate defied conventional assumptions about his support and redrew America’s political map.
We’re also reading . . .
The lure of the strongman: Trump has fundamentally shifted the norms and ideology of American politics, writes Gideon Rachman.
Australian business scandals: A spate of controversies has put the country’s boards on notice, Nic Fildes explains.
World trade: Just how dependent is the world trading system on the US? We’re about to stress-test the question with Trump headed back to the White House, writes Alan Beattie.
Chart of the day
With their crushing defeat in this week’s US election, the Democrats joined Britain’s Tories and Japan’s Liberal Democrats in 2024’s graveyard of incumbents in an unprecedented year of elections, writes our chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch.
Take a break from the news
Our Lego-loving food writer Tim Hayward dined at the Mini Chef café at the toymakers’ Danish headquarters. A meal prepared by tiny plastic people sparked a revelation about hospitality.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The Bank of England has delivered its verdict on Rachel Reeves’ Budget: it will bring higher growth and higher prices in the short term, and new uncertainty over the outlook for the economy further ahead.
The UK chancellor’s £70bn boost to spending has reinforced the monetary policy committee’s caution about the scope for further interest rate cuts, following the reduction from 5 per cent to 4.75 per cent on Thursday.
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Budget measures will add 0.75 percentage points to GDP and around 0.5 percentage points to consumer price inflation in a year’s time, the MPC said. But the impact of the biggest tax change — the £26bn increase in employers’ national insurance contributions — is much harder to assess.
Policymakers, already wary of cutting rates too fast in the face of persistent wage pressures, want to see how businesses respond to a change that will make it much more expensive to hire low-wage workers.
“A gradual approach to removing monetary policy restraint will help us to observe how this plays out, along with other risks to the inflation outlook,” governor Andrew Bailey told reporters on Thursday.
The MPC’s new forecasts show consumer price inflation will be running at 2.7 per cent in the final quarter of 2025 — well above its previous forecast of 2.2 per cent. It will fall below the 2 per cent target only in mid-2027, a full year later than the committee expected in August. The higher inflation is largely because of the combined effects of the Budget measures.
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The main driver is the big, front-loaded increase in government consumption and investment, which will pump up demand in the near-term, while any improvements in the supply capacity of the economy will take much longer to materialise.
The MPC now expects spare capacity in the economy to open up later, and to a smaller extent, than it expected in August — on the face of it pointing to a slower pace of rate reductions in the coming quarters.
The inflation forecasts also reflect the direct effects on prices of the rise in the cap on bus fares, the introduction of VAT on private school fees and the increase in vehicle excise duty, which will all take effect next year.
Plans to increase fuel duty in line with inflation from 2026 are also factored into the BoE’s new forecast, although previous chancellors have repeatedly failed to follow through on fuel duty uprating.
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Far more uncertain, however, is the effect of the chancellor’s big tax hike on businesses through employers’ national insurance contributions.
Employers could respond in several ways, Bailey said: by raising prices, accepting lower profits, improving productivity, holding down wages or cutting employment. The overall effect was unpredictable as it would rely on the strength of consumer demand and workers’ bargaining power.
“There is obviously a lot we will learn about the effects of the Budget as they pass through. It’s important we all have the time to do that,” he said.
Clare Lombardelli, the BoE’s deputy governor for monetary policy, noted that the effects would differ between sectors: “It is very uncertain . . . we will want to observe it and talk to businesses about precisely how they plan to respond.”
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The BoE’s task will be all the harder because poor data means it is still very hard to assess how strong the jobs market is, and whether workers are in a position to resist attempts to squeeze their pay.
Economists said it was striking, given the material impact of the Budget measures, that the BoE had not signalled any change in its policy stance, with Bailey saying it would not be right “to conclude that the path for interest rates will be very different due to the Budget”.
Its forecasts are premised on market expectations for interest rates in the run-up to the Budget, which implied the benchmark rate would fall to 3.5 per cent in three years.
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Since that forecast was finalised, market expectations for bank rate at the end of 2025 have risen by nearly 0.5 percentage points.
But Sandra Horsfield, economist at Investec, said the implications of the two major developments since the BoE’s August forecasts — the UK Budget and US election — remained far from clear.
She said: “The MPC has chosen a middle path as its baseline, but stressed uncertainties on both sides — and its willingness to react should that judgment be wrong.”
A HUGE open-air museum has been named one of the UK’s top Christmas breaks for 2024.
Visit England named Beamish as one of eight “uber-festive” places Brits should visit this year.
According to Visit England, the eight attractions each offer something different from “festive light trails with your mates, Christmas afternoon tea with your mum, romantic evenings at German Christmas markets and December days out with the kids to meet Santa”.
And one of the places in Visit England‘s top picks is the “living museum” of Beamish in County Durham.
The huge open-air museum allows visitors to see what life would have been like in the UK between the 1820s and 1950s.
From November 23 until December 24, its replica homes, pubs, shops and businesses will be transformed into a huge festive attraction.
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Read More on Christmas Travel
The sprawling 300-acre estate will be decked out with golden fairy lights, pine garlands and a huge Christmas tree
Some of the replica homes will be set for Christmas too with traditional grub on display.
Visitors can sample some retro sweets at the 1990s town sweet shop and listen to festive music in the countdown to Christmas.
The northern attraction will also be serving a range of “yuletide treats”.
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Even though there aren’t any specifics on its website, its onsite team rooms will most likely be serving traditional mince pies and other baked goods.
For younger visitors, Beamish will also play host to the big man himself with a Christmas Grotto.
Birmingham Frankfurt Christmas Market was crowned 8th place in Best Christmas Markets in Europe 2024 by European Best Destinations
Father Christmas will be meeting kids inside his grotto at Rowley Station Goods Yards. Grotto visits cost an additional £8 per child.
The Visit England website reads: “Experience wonderful festivities and enjoy a wintery stroll around the open-air museum grounds, made extra special by the unique surroundings.
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“Afterwards, see the traditional decorations, enjoy festive treats and find that perfect present for someone special.”
Beamish will also be open for evening visits on set days throughout December for visitors who want to experience the open-air attraction after dark.
Previous visitors have been impressed by the festive offering at Beamish, with one writing on TripAdvisor: “Beamish is a yearly festive visit for us of which this year we were truly blessed to waddle around the day after a sprinkling of snow.
“It was truly magical and added to the Christmas spirit.”
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Another added: “We have been to visit at Christmas and I have to say it is one of the best Santa experiences our kids have been to.”
One of the main reasons it remains so popular is that its tickets are all annual passes.
From £17.35 for kids, £27.95 for adults, or £71 for a family of four, ticket holders can visit the museum as many times as they like for a year following the day of their first visit.
One of the best Santa experiences our kids have been to
Visit England named seven other places in its list of top festive days out, including Winchester, Chester, Norwich and York.
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The four cities were praised for their Christmas Markets, with wooden stalls and chalets descending on each destination every year.
The chocolate-box villages of the Cotswolds like Broadway, Chipping Camden and Bourton-on-the-Water were also named as top places for a festive day out by Visit England.
Bourton-on-the-Water celebrates the festive season by putting a Christmas tree in its river.
The tiny Cornish village of Mousehole also made the cut thanks to its sea light show.
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Also on the list was Mompesson House in Salisbury, with its Dickensian-style rooms hosting festive activities.
Three unusual Christmas markets to visit
HERE are three other unusual Christmas markets to visit in Europe.
Kerststad Valkenburg, the Netherlands
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The award-winning Christmas market covers every corner of the town, with events at several locations, including several underground caves. One of these is the Velvet Cave Christmas Market, which is situated underneath Valkenburg’s ruined castle. It is home to more than 50 stalls selling handmade gifts and other items.
Fraueninsel Christmas Market
Every winter, the island of Fraueninsel (also known as Frauenchiemsee), in Bavaria, Germany is transformed into a festive attraction thanks to its Christmas market. Fraueninsel is the second-largest island on Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria and is the only island in Germany with its very own Christmas market.
Fraueninsel Christmas Market has been described as one of the “most wonderful” in Bavaria by The Best Places to Visit in Germany. The Christmas market spills across the entirety of the island with both decorations and lights hung from trees and lampposts. There are over 90 wooden stalls at the market that sell handmade gifts, mulled wine, and local delicacies.
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Winter Wonder Weeks, the Netherlands
Each year, Leiden in the Netherlands is transformed into a picturesque winter wonderland. The award-winning Christmas Market covers the entire city, with attractions held outside Hooglandse Kerkgracht (a gothic church) and Garenmarktplein (a square in the city).
Known as Winter Wonder Weeks, the Christmas market was previously named the best in Europe in 2016. The Christmas market spans across the entire town, with one of its most unique features being its floating ice rink.
MORTGAGE lenders have raced to slash their rates after the Bank of England cut interest rates to 4.75% this afternoon.
This move will immediately benefit thousands of mortgage customers with Halifax, Lloyds Bank, and Metro Bank, who will see a decrease in their repayment amounts.
Plus, customers with Barclays, Coventry Building Society, Leeds Building Society, Nationwide, NatWest, Skipton, and Virgin Money can also expect changes in the coming days and weeks.
For example, Santander and Accord mortgage cut their fixed-rates by up to 0.36%.
Earlier this afternoon, the Bank of England‘s (BoE) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) cut the base rate by 0.25 percentage points from 5% to 4.75%.
Lenders use the base rate to set their interest rates for savings and borrowing costs, including mortgages.
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This reduction means millions of mortgage holders will see their bills decrease.
The central bank’s decision comes after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that inflation stood at 1.7% in September, well below the BoE’s 2% target.
Interest rates had previously risen from historic lows of 0.1% in December 2021, peaking at 5.25% in July 2023, as part of efforts to reduce inflation to the Bank’s target.
A fall in interest rates usually leads to a decrease in mortgage interest rates.
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However, the reduction you’ll see depends on the type of home loan you have.
Those on tracker and standard variable rate (SVR) mortgages typically see an immediate change in payments.
What is the Bank of England base rate and how does it affect me?
A tracker mortgage is a type of variable mortgage where your monthly payments rise and fall in line with the Bank of England base rate.
With a tracker mortgage, you’ll usually pay the base rate plus an additional percentage in interest each month.
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A standard variable rate mortgage is what you revert to once any initial mortgage term ends.
This rate will change in line with the base rate and is usually higher than any initial introductory rate.
There are currently 643,000 customers on tracker mortgages and 624,000 on SVRs.
TotallyMoney states that today’s 0.25% rate cut will immediately save homeowners £32 a month or £382 a year on the average tracker mortgage.
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Those on fixed-rate mortgages won’t see any changes until their deals end and they take out a new one.
Even if your lender has cut rates, the date your repayments actually change will depend on when your payment is due.
We’ve listed all the lenders cutting mortgage rates below.
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BARCLAYS
All of Barclays’ UK residential and buy-to-let mortgage products are fixed or otherwise track the BoE base rate.
Therefore, whenever the base rate goes up or down, customers on tracker rates will see their interest rate change accordingly.
If you’ve got a tracker or variable rate mortgage with Barclays, your mortgage rate will fall by 0.25% on December 1.
For new customers, the rates will be amended from November 8.
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The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
COVENTRY BUILDING SOCIETY
Following the Bank of England Base Rate change, all Coventry Building Society mortgages that track the Base Rate will automatically decrease by 0.25%.
This will take effect from 1 December.
The building society said that all the rates offered on its standard variable mortgages are currently under review.
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The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
HALIFAX
Where a customer has a mortgage that tracks the bank base rate, their rate will be cut with immediate effect in line with their terms and conditions.
The Halifax Homeowner Variable Rate (HVR), currently at 8.49%, will decrease by 25 basis points to 8.24%.
The Halifax Standard Variable Rate (SVR), currently at 8.49%, will also decrease by 25 basis points to 8.24%.
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The changes to the SVR rates above will come into effect for existing customer accounts from December 1.
The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
LLOYDS BANK
Where a customer has a mortgage that tracks the bank base rate, their rate will be cut with immediate effect in line with their terms and conditions.
The Lloyds Bank Homeowner Variable Rate, currently at 8.49% will decrease by 25 basis points to 8.24%.
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The Lloyds Standard Variable Rate, currently at 7.00%, will decrease by 25 basis points to 6.75%.
The changes to the SVR rates above will come into effect for existing customer accounts from December 1.
The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
METRO BANK
A Metro Bank spokesperson said: “In line with the Bank of England decreasing the base rate from 5% to 4.75% we’re updating all retail mortgage products that track the Bank of England base rate.
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“We are confident that our wide range of mortgages continue to meet our customers’ needs but we encourage anyone who may be worried about their payments to get in touch to discuss their options.”
These changes have come into effect immediately and will be reflected in your next monthly payment on impacted accounts.
Metro Bank said it would formally confirm the changes on its website, and all impacted customers would receive communications about them over the next couple of days.
The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
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NATIONWIDE
Mortgage customers on Nationwide’s standard mortgage rate (SMR) will decrease by 25 basis points.
The new SMR of 7.49% will come into effect on December 1.
Rates on tracker mortgages held by existing customers automatically decrease when the Bank rate is cut, so these will decrease to reflect the Bank rate change from December 1.
The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
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NATWEST
A NatWest spokesperson said: “Following the Bank of England base rate cut, we will be passing on the rate cut in full to our customers on a standard variable rate (SVR) mortgage.
“The SVR will be reduced from 7.99% to 7.74%, effective from December 1.
“SVR customers may also be able to save money by switching to one of our fixed-rate mortgages.”
The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
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SKIPTON BUILDING SOCIETY
Customers who have mortgages which track the Bank of England base rate will see their account interest rate change in line with their terms and conditions.
For most base rate tracker products, rates will be decreased no later than 14 days from today (November 7).
Skipton’s current, on sale base rate tracker mortgage products will continue to be available until 10pm on Sunday, November 10.
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The new rates reflecting the 0.25% Bank of England base rate cut will be available from Monday, November 11.
The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
VIRGIN MONEY
Virgin Money is writing to customers who have a mortgage directly linked to the Bank of England base rate to confirm their new monthly mortgage payment and interest rate.
Any new rates set will take effect from January 1.
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The lender’s fixed-rate mortgages remain unchanged.
How to get the best deal on your mortgage
IF you’re looking for a traditional type of mortgage, getting the best rates depends entirely on what’s available at any given time.
If you’re remortgaging and your loan-to-value ratio (LTV) has changed, you’ll get access to better rates than before.
Your LTV will go down if your outstanding mortgage is lower and/or your home’s value is higher.
A change to your credit score or a better salary could also help you access better rates.
And if you’re nearing the end of a fixed deal soon it’s worth looking for new deals now.
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You can lock in current deals sometimes up to six months before your current deal ends.
Leaving a fixed deal early will usually come with an early exit fee, so you want to avoid this extra cost.
But depending on the cost and how much you could save by switching versus sticking, it could be worth paying to leave the deal – but compare the costs first.
You can also go to a mortgage broker who can compare a much larger range of deals for you.
Some will charge an extra fee but there are plenty who give advice for free and get paid only on commission from the lender.
You’ll also need to factor in fees for the mortgage, though some have no fees at all.
You can add the fee – sometimes more than £1,000 – to the cost of the mortgage, but be aware that means you’ll pay interest on it and so will cost more in the long term.
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