The industry is pulling together to drive collective action in the fight against climate change, and we at AMI are playing our part by establishing greenmortgageadvice.uk in collaboration with the Mortgage Climate Action Group (MCAG) and the Green Finance Institute (GFI).
About the MCAG
The Green Mortgage Advice website was primarily established to showcase the work of the Mortgage Climate Action Group (you can follow them on LinkedIn here). Launched in April 2022, the MCAG helps intermediaries to understand and address green issues involved in mortgage applications. It aims to ensure that advisers’ interests are represented amongst lenders, regulators, trade bodies, and government institutions.
The founding partners – Legal & General, Sesame Bankhall Group and SimplyBiz Mortgages – have since been joined by other leading firms, including HLPartnership, Mortgage Intelligence, PRIMIS Mortgage Network, The Openwork Partnership and Paradigm Mortgage Services.
The MCAG held its inaugural event, open to attendees from across the sector, on Thursday the 4th of August via Zoom to kickstart the discussion for our industry. The second online event, “Seeing the BTL Market Through Green-Tinted Spectacles”, was held on 3rd November.
You can rewatch both events and find out more about upcoming ones here.
About the GFI
The Green Finance Institute was established in 2019 as a direct response to a key policy recommendation made by the industry-led Green Finance Taskforce to the UK Government in March 2018.
Sitting at the nexus of the public and private sectors, the GFI convenes and leads sectoral coalitions of global experts that identify and unlock barriers to investment towards impactful, real-economy outcomes, to benefit our environment, society, and business.
In conjunction with MCAG and other key stakeholders, we are currently supporting the GFI to produce a Brokers’ Handbook on green home retrofit and technologies. This will serve as a comprehensive introduction to the topic for mortgage brokers and associated professionals, and will be freely accessible via the Green Mortgage Advice website as a live document that will be regularly updated.
Work on the handbook is nearing completion, so keep an eye out for further details on the release date.
Wider Aims
At AMI, we want to ensure all brokers have open access to information and training on Green, as it will become an increasingly important part of the advice landscape. Alongside our efforts to challenge unhelpful ‘greenwashing’ practices, we’re also actively trying to combat what has recently been termed ‘green hushing’: where companies don’t share knowledge, best practices or action plans on green innovation for fear of losing a competitive advantage. Our stance is that this issue is too important to be kept behind closed doors.
The website is also about supporting the net zero transition in the mortgage industry, so extends to promoting sustainable business practices, energy saving and cost of living guidance, and general climate change awareness.
We welcome you to explore the website and let us know if you have any feedback. As AMI’s Robert Sinclair writes, “in launching the site now we are in the early days of a decades long journey. We will continue to add to and amend the site over time. We want it to be yours, so please let us know what we can do to improve it for you.”
