Aldermore considers contractors from the first contract, with the prior employed career providing the continuity evidence — the same logic as Bank of Ireland Bespoke and Hodge, applied with Aldermore's characteristic edge-case tolerance layered on top.
The transitioning professional with a credit blip, an unusual structure, or a first contract shorter than ideal finds at Aldermore the combination of flexibilities that other day-one lenders offer only singly.
Aldermore’s tolerance for gaps between contracts runs meaningfully beyond the mainstream’s four-to-six-week ceiling — extended breaks with sensible explanations (travel, family, retraining, market cycles) are weighed in context rather than auto-declined. For contractors whose history includes the sabbatical or the slow quarter that real careers contain, this tolerance alone decides the lender choice.
Aldermore prices as a specialist: above the mainstream rate leaders, reflecting the manual cost and the risk breadth. The premium buys proceeding now with the file you actually have — and the standard exit is the remortgage two to five years later, onto mainstream pricing once history has accumulated and credit has healed. We plan that exit at the outset, so Aldermore is a chapter, not the whole book.
Aldermore accepts mild adverse credit — historic missed payments, satisfied defaults, older CCJs, and discharged bankruptcy after twelve months — alongside contractor income assessment. This pairing matters: the deep-adverse specialists (Kensington, Bluestone, Pepper) handle worse credit, but their contractor income treatment varies; Aldermore holds both competencies in one underwrite.
For the contractor whose credit file carries a healed wound, Aldermore is usually the first comparison and frequently the last.
Aldermore is well suited to contractors with multiple income sources, offering flexible assessment where standard lenders often struggle.
Income from concurrent contracts can be combined for affordability.
Aldermore files are built for human readers: contracts and rate evidence, the career narrative behind a short history, the explanation and evidence behind any gap or credit event, bank statements that corroborate the story. The completeness and candour of the file directly shapes the decision — manual underwriting rewards the well-told truth, and that telling is our craft.
Specialist pricing applies — above the mainstream leaders, buying the manual underwrite and the risk breadth. The standard strategy is Aldermore now, mainstream remortgage in two to five years once history and credit mature. We plan that exit from the outset.