Back before the big crash, I transferred some property mortgages to the Heritable Bank Plc, a 132 year old Scottish incorporated Bank which had “a long tradition of providing specialist finance solutions to companies and individuals in the UK” and which had been bought by Icelandic bank Landsbanki in 2000. You used to go with who you trusted in banking, to secure the long term success and stability of your business and Heritable seemed like a good business to trust, long history and all that. Yes, yes, we all know better now. In October 2008, Heritable went into administration, due to the massive over extension of the Icelandic banking system and collapse of parent company Landsbanki. DOH.
There’s been an in limbo period of almost five years where I’ve been paying monthly ‘as per usual’ to administrators but nothing else has happened. I’ve written to them to try and redeem the loan by funding with another lender but was ignored. Then today I get a letter telling me that there has been “a change in your mortgage account” and that the mortgage has been “assigned to Mars Capital Finance Ltd”. So I go on line to look for them and the web-site doesn’t work. So I call the Heritable Bank (in administration) number for information and Mars Capital Finance Ltd answer, but moreorless refuse to give me any information about themselves, e.g. who they are, are they a British company, how long they’ve been trading, etc.
Completely bizarre and not just a little disconcerting. What a strange world we live in where people’s lives and livelihoods get transferred willy nilly across companies and you end up dealing with a business about whom you know and are apparently allowed to know absolutely nothing. But it’s ok, as it’s “all in the terms and conditions”……. It’s all quite depressing 😦
If I had my way they’d all be hosed down with a high pressure jet wash to wash the BS away and then we’d all start over again doing banking the proper, old fashioned way. Well, a girl can daydream, can’t she……
Same thing happened to us are the terms still legal Johnny l
No idea!
Please could anyone tell me if the situation with Mars has been resolved, I am trying to buy a property from a gentleman who was with heritable and now he tells me he can’t get the loan released from mars. After reading this post I understand his poaition but I cannot spend much more time on this property, does anyone have any updates or advise on how to get the property paid off and the charge taken off. Regards
Sorry not replied earlier. I’ve not got any further with this, I think there will be delaying problems for quite a while!
Hey there exactly the same happened to me and I’m still with mars atv10.74 %… did you ever get any resolvement with your issue , thanks steve
Hi Stephen, I refinanced a few years ago now to Paragon, so the loans are no longer with MARS. They were pretty intransigent, no discounts on paying off the loan etc. is this an option for you? 10.74 is insane
Hey thanks for replying so fast , I am currently looking into paying it off but have been unable to refinance due to the changes in mortgage affordability. There are over 200,000 people stuck as mortgage prisoners like me and was just searching to see if anyone had any luck… hopefully the government will step in to help these people as it us a scandal .
Anyway thankyou so much and have a great year , steve