Trustbond pre-qualifies 3,000 applicants for NMRC’s 10,000 mortgages
Trustbond Mortgage Bank Plc, one of Nigeria’s few primary mortgage banks (PMBs) operating at national level with N5 billion capital base, says it has prequalified over 3,000 applicants to the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company’s (NMRC) 10,000 housing mortgages.
NMRC in 2014 launched the 10,000 housing mortgages initiative and out of the 66,000 responses nationwide, Trustbond received 9,000 applications which is more than 13 percent of the whole applications nationwide and has pre-qualified over 3,000 applicants who have already been given provisional offer letters.
Niyi Akinlusi, the bank’s CEO, who gave these hints in an interview with BusinessDay, also disclosed that before now, as part of efforts to reduce the housing stock deficit, the bank had financed projects that were successfully concluded.
“Notable among them are County Estate in Agege and Emerald Estate in Oniru”, he said, adding, “we have also successfully processed 251 National Housing Fund (NHF) disbursements for various housing projects and have done mortgages for over 104 Nigerians”.
According to him, the objective of the bank was to ensure housing inclusion for the growing populace at affordable price, hoping to continue to support initiatives to move the mortgage industry forward and contribute to reducing unemployment and providing more services.
“We expect to triple our mortgage portfolio in the next three to five years considering the projects we have at hand presently; we have a national franchise which enables us to engage in programmes that deal with people in all parts of the country”, he revealed.
Trustbond is an off-shoot of Intercontinental Homes Plc, a subsidiary of the defunct Intercontinental Bank Plc, and Akinlusi noted that though Trusbond has had a chequered past, they still cherished the experience, explaining that they did not only survive the odds despite that their parent bank was affected, but also came out stronger.
He said they remained resolute, offering different platforms, working with major developers and key stakeholders in the industry like NMRC and Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), and cooperating with them to continue to reduce the housing stock deficit.
“Our major challenges have been access to long term funding and foreclosure issues as well as rising cost of building materials which is not helped by the volatility in the foreign exchange rate market; we believe that our investment in NMRC will soon begin to yield the expected result of access to long term funding”, the CEO assured.
He noted that government efforts were directed towards reducing housing stock deficit which has attracted more players in this direction, pointing out that more people were getting involved in different areas and that the NMRC has been birthed already.
“It is the first one in the new effort to bring about a functional mortgage system.
The NMRC operation will enhance mortgage banks’ financial ability to meet more mortgage requests. It is interesting to note that new companies like the NMRC will be licensed by CBN as the industry progresses. Before now, we have had FMBN in the market too. And together they would make the real estate sector grow faster.
CHUKA UROKO