Your clients can now get up to £2,000 cashback for making energy-efficient home improvements, says Amanda Bryden, head of Halifax Intermediaries.

We want to make it easier for more borrowers to invest in the energy efficiency of their home.

This is essential to tackle climate change and to help the UK reach net zero by 2050.

Energy-efficient homes can be cheaper to run and warmer to live in, and they could also carry a price premium when retrofitting work has been done. 

And now your client can access up to £2,000 cashback from Halifax if they make specific home improvements, with our Green Living Reward.

What is the Green Living Reward?

Now available to intermediary clients, Halifax’s Green Living Reward is designed to reward borrowers who make energy-efficient home improvements with cashback up to £2,000.

It’s available to all Halifax mortgage applications keyed on or after the 31st of July. To receive the cashback, your client must make eligible improvements to their home within a year of completion on their mortgage, remortgage, product transfer or further advance. They will also need to have a Halifax current account when they make their claim.

Here’s how the scheme works:

The cashback reward

Your Halifax mortgage clients can claim one of three cashback rewards, up to:

• £2,000 if they’ve installed an air source or ground source heat pump
• £1,000 for solar panels or a battery for solar storage
• £500 for other improvements, including double glazing, a range of different types of insulation, smart air bricks, solar thermal heating or a biomass pellet boiler.

Who qualifies for the cashback?

We’ve made the Green Living Reward as accessible as possible, so it isn’t limited to certain mortgage products.

Instead, it’s available on all Halifax mortgage products and borrowing [FW3] types, including purchases, remortgages, product transfers and further advances (on new applications made on or after 31st July).

We’ve teamed up with trusted installation partners – Octopus Energy for heat pumps and Effective Home for insulation and solar installation. There are benefits to using our installers, but your client can use their own if they prefer. They can get a £100 bill credit on their Octopus Energy bill, or a £500 discount off solar installation with Effective Home.

We have no restrictions on government grants being used to help fund these improvements in addition to our cashback, so it’s feasible that replacing an outdated gas boiler could cost your client nothing, for example.

It’s worth sharing details of the available government and other schemes, as your client may not be aware of possible financial help.

They include the:

• Energy Company Obligation Scheme (ECO)
• Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS)
• Smart Export Guarantee (SEG)  
• Great British Insulation Scheme
• Warmer Homes Scotland
• Home Energy Scotland Loan (HES)
• Nest Scheme Wales
• Affordable Warmth Scheme Northern Ireland

What’s the process?

Brokers don’t need to do anything to process the Green Living Reward. Just discuss energy efficiency with your client and inform them of this scheme if a Halifax mortgage is suitable for their needs.

We’ll email them directly at offer stage to tell them about the Green Living Reward and check if they are eligible. We’ll explain that it’s an optional mortgage benefit and they’re under no obligation to sign up.

If they don’t hold a current account with us, we’ll signpost them to open one if they want to progress with the cashback scheme in the next 12 months.

Then they can log in to see the list of eligible improvements and find our trusted suppliers (although they can choose their own provider).

Once any work is complete, all they need to do is upload their invoice and fill in a few details to submit their claim, and we’ll make payments within 72 hours.

If your client isn’t sure what sustainable home improvements to make to their property, our Home Energy Saving Tool

on the Halifax Intermediaries website provides a tailored picture of the changes they can make, and which will be most cost-effective.

You can decide whether to use the tool with your client or send them the link to use it themselves.

Why have we launched this?

We’re on a mission to help make the UK’s homes more sustainable and energy efficient.

This is essential to tackle climate change and to help the UK reach net zero by 2050.

We’ve been running the Green Living Reward successfully through our direct channel and now we want to make this available to brokers’ clients.

Not only are we looking to support as many homes in the UK to become more sustainable in order to help tackle climate change, we also know from our research

how important energy efficiency is for homeowners. The Green Living Reward helps address both of these needs.

Six in 10 (57%) homeowners think it’s important to make their property ‘net-zero ready’ by 2035, but many aren’t confident about how to get there.

There’s a clear opportunity for funding solutions, with just one in five able to pay for the steps needed to ensure their home is ‘net-zero ready’.

Seven in 10 (68%) homeowners said they want support from their bank or mortgage provider to improve their home’s energy efficiency.

For brokers, this is an opportunity to deepen your client relationships, help them to save on energy costs and potentially support them with a remortgage or additional borrowing to fund the works.

Bringing energy efficiency into the client conversation early is good for borrowers and brokers. By sharing details of initiatives such as the Green Living Reward, government grants and refinancing solutions, you can support them with the funding of any work while making them aware of the benefits of retrofitting.

For the use of mortgage intermediaries and other professionals only.

The information contained in this article is the property of Lloyds Banking Group plc and may not be reused or publicised without our prior permission. The information provided is intended to be for information only and is not intended to be relied upon. This information is correct as of August 2024 and is relevant to Halifax products and services only. If you do not have professional experience, you should not rely on the information contained in this communication. If you are a professional and you reproduce any part of the information contained in this communication, to be used with or to advise private clients, you must ensure it conforms to the Financial Conduct Authority’s advising and selling rules. Halifax is a division of Bank of Scotland plc. Registered in Scotland No. SC327000. Registered Office: The Mound, Edinburgh EH1 1YZ. Bank of Scotland plc is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority under registration number 169628.