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As yet there’s been no Stock Market announcement or holding statement issued, but it is rumoured that Cattles PLC (CTT) are in the process of buying Manchester-based sub-prime lender London Scottish Bank. London Scottish Bank announced in July that it had received a number of approaches from other firms looking to acquire the company, but it is believed it is now in exclusive talks with Cattles.

London Scottish Bank - which comprises of intermediary lender London Scottish Mortgages -specialises in personal loans, home collected credit, debt collecting, secured lending, factoring and reinsurance. If this happens, it will be interesting to see how it affects Cattles relationship with the Alliance and Leicester.

Despite only launching in August Loanoptions has reported 400 intermediaries signing up to its white label website offer. Speaking about the success of the website offer, Andrew Moody, managing director of Loanoptions.co.uk said “By giving intermediaries a compliant shop window, they can now confidently market products knowing that they are totally compliant and at the same time open a new business avenue and income stream and it has not cost them a penny.”

At the same time another secured loans specialist Yes Loans and Mortgages has just celebrated its 5th Birthday. Having started with only 3 staff as late as 2001, Cardiff based Yes now has 80 staff and predicts turnover of £10 million for its sixth year of trading.

Yes is also to be named as one of the fastest growing companies in Wales in The Western Mail’s ‘FG50’ annual league at a dinner at The Celtic Manor later this month.

Money Partners, the secured loan specialists, have recruited Paul Lipton-Rose as head of sales. Paul Lipton-Rose formerly worked for another secured loans specialist Southern Pacific Mortgages Ltd. In this newly-created position, Lipton-Rose will take a leading role in the structured expansion of Money Partners’ intermediary distribution by developing new relationship opportunities to complement existing broker and packager partnerships.

On another front, Money Partners has launched an electronic identification facility to its supporting brokers and packagers. e-ID is an enhanced credit search engine based on Equifax technology. Available via the specialist lender’s intermediary website, MoneyPort, it reduces significantly the need for paper-based client identification evidence required under ‘Know Your Customer’ rules. Money Partners carried out a full-length test of the facility during August in which 6,000 e-ID searches were made.

The use of these tools to identify customers is on the rise and one imagines some consolidation or the development of some generic tools to be used across the board.

I’m might delve into this one in more detail later, but another piece of news is that Barclays, via Barclays Private Equity, is about to take a 30% stake in Blemain. Blemain Group comprises of three businesses – Cheshire Mortgage Corporation, which specialises in first charge non-conforming mortgages and bridging finance; Lancashire Mortgage Corporation, which deals with commercial finance, and Blemain Finance, which provides secured loans.

Yes Loans the Cardiff based secured loans and mortgages provider has launched its latest initiative called Weblink. The service allows mortgage brokers the facility to offer white labelled secured loans from their own website.

Banking Insurance Services Ltd (BISL) has launched a secured loan service. The company is initially starting with two Companies Blemain and Future Mortgages and will offer a cross section of prime and sub prime schemes.

Following on from my post about a Grey Market, Scarborough Building Society have again extended their “light adverse” mortgage. It offers mortgages to some people with CCJs, a history of mortgage arrears, bankrupty orders and IVAs.