Terms of Business - 2026

These Terms explain the services we provide, the basis on which we act for you, how we are paid, and the responsibilities that apply when you use our services. Please read them carefully. If anything is unclear, ask your adviser before you proceed.

When you click or otherwise indicate that you accept these Terms, you agree to them. These Terms govern our intermediary and related services. They do not themselves create a mortgage, secured-loan or insurance contract with a lender or insurer; those contracts have their own terms.

Better.co.uk is a trading name of Trussle Lab Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 09459339.

Trussle Lab Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under firm reference number 924229. Our permitted business includes advising on and arranging mortgages, insurance and secured loans. You can check our status and permissions on the Financial Services Register.

Registered and correspondence address: 1st Floor, Wellington House, Wellington Street, Cardiff, CF11 9BE.

In these Terms, “Better.co.uk”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Trussle Lab Ltd. “You” and “your” mean the customer or prospective customer using our services.

2. Our service

We provide regulated advice and arrangement services in relation to mortgages, second-charge mortgages (secured loans) and protection insurance. We also provide related case-management and digital services and may introduce customers to third-party providers for other products or services.

Where we provide advice, we will normally:

• get to know your needs, objectives, preferences and circumstances;

• assess relevant affordability, eligibility and suitability information;

• research products within the scope of the service described to you;

• provide a personal recommendation where our service is advised;

• explain material features, costs, risks and limitations of the recommended product;

• provide the relevant illustration, ESIS or other pre-contract information where required;

• help package and progress your application and liaise with relevant providers; and

• record why a recommendation has been made.

Our advice is based on the information reasonably available at the time. Product availability, pricing and lender or insurer criteria can change. A recommendation does not guarantee that a provider will accept an application.

3. Mortgage advice and arrangement

3.1 Scope of our mortgage service

We provide advice on first-charge mortgages from a panel of mortgage lenders. Our service is panel-based and does not necessarily consider every mortgage available in the market. In particular, we do not normally consider products that are available only by applying directly to a lender.

Our mortgage panel is reviewed periodically. We consider matters such as target-market coverage, product availability, customer outcomes, service performance and conflicts of interest. Remuneration is not the sole basis on which a lender is included or a recommendation is made.

Where FCA rules require it, we will give you, in a durable medium and in good time, the names of the lenders whose products we offer and any other required information about the limitations of our service.

3.2 Buy-to-let and business-purpose mortgages

Some buy-to-let and business-purpose mortgage activity is not regulated by the FCA. We will tell you when a product or service we are discussing with you is not regulated and explain any material difference in regulatory protection.

4. Secured-loan advice and arrangement

We advise on and arrange second-charge mortgages, commonly referred to as secured loans, from a panel of lenders. We will assess whether the secured-loan route is appropriate within the scope of the service we provide and will consider relevant alternatives as described in section 5.

A second-charge mortgage is secured against your property and sits alongside your existing first-charge mortgage. It can increase your total secured borrowing and, particularly where borrowing is taken over a long term, may increase the total amount of interest you pay.

Our secured-loan panel is reviewed periodically by reference to product availability, target-market coverage, customer outcomes, service and conflicts of interest.

5. Alternative borrowing options

If you are looking to increase borrowing secured on a property that already has a mortgage, other forms of finance may be available and may be more appropriate. Depending on your circumstances, these may include:

• a further advance from your existing mortgage lender;

• a second-charge mortgage;

• remortgaging to a new first-charge mortgage; and

• unsecured borrowing.

We do not provide advice on every type of unsecured or commercial lending. Where an option falls outside our service, we will make that limitation clear. We may refer you to another specialist where appropriate, but any separate firm will be responsible for its own service and disclosures. A firm we refer you to may be another company in the OneDome group, and we or another group company may receive a payment or other benefit for the referral. We will tell you when a referral is to a company in our group and whether we will be paid for it. You are never obliged to use a firm we refer you to.

6. Protection advice and arrangement

We provide advised protection distribution, which may include life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection.

Our protection advice is provided on the basis of a fair and personal analysis. We advise on contracts from a panel of approved protection providers, which we maintain at a size sufficient to allow a fair and personal analysis of the market. The panel is reviewed periodically to ensure that it remains sufficiently broad and appropriate for the customers we serve. You can ask us for a list of the providers on our protection panel.

A protection specialist will assess your demands and needs and, where we make a personal recommendation, explain why the recommended policy is suitable. The recommendation will consider relevant matters such as the level and term of cover, affordability, exclusions, limitations and provider underwriting.

Protection underwriting may require health, medical, occupational and lifestyle information. You are not required to provide information that is not necessary, but we may be unable to recommend or arrange appropriate cover if information required for the advice or application is not provided.

You will receive the relevant policy information and cancellation terms before or in good time after entering into the insurance contract, as applicable.

7. Home insurance referral

We may introduce you to Uinsure Limited for buildings and contents insurance. Better.co.uk does not charge you a separate referral fee.

Uinsure Limited is an FCA-authorised general insurance intermediary (firm reference number 463689) and will provide its own information about the products and services it offers, including whether a particular journey is advised or non-advised.

Where you buy a policy following our referral, Better.co.uk may receive commission. Our current commission can be up to 27.5% of the insurance premium for standard buildings and contents policies. The absence of a separate customer fee does not mean the distribution service has no cost.

You are not required to purchase home insurance through Uinsure and should consider whether the product meets your needs.

8. RateWatch mortgage monitoring

Where RateWatch forms part of your service, we may monitor information about your existing mortgage and compare it with relevant mortgage information available to us. We may contact you if our monitoring indicates that reviewing your mortgage could be worthwhile.

A RateWatch alert is not itself a personal recommendation and does not mean that another mortgage is suitable or available to you. If you want to act on an alert, we will reassess your circumstances and provide regulated advice before making a recommendation.

RateWatch is provided without a separate customer charge. You can opt out of the service at any time by contacting us.

9. Your application and our authority to act

By asking us to provide our services, you authorise us to communicate and exchange relevant information on your behalf with lenders, insurers and other organisations involved in your application or transaction, where this is necessary to provide the service.

A lender, insurer or other provider is responsible for its own underwriting, eligibility, pricing and acceptance decisions. We cannot guarantee that an application will be accepted, that a quoted product will remain available or that a transaction will complete.

We may decline, pause or stop an application where, for example:

• the product is no longer available and no suitable alternative within our service can be identified;

• we cannot verify information or documents reasonably required for the application;

• the application falls outside the scope of the services or products we provide;

• the relevant lender or insurer declines the application;

• we reasonably identify a legal, regulatory, fraud, sanctions or other financial-crime concern; or

• continuing would not be appropriate or lawful.

If we decide not to continue, we will explain this to you where we are able to do so.

You remain responsible for your wider property transaction, including instructing and communicating with your solicitor or conveyancer, unless we have expressly agreed to provide an additional service.

10. Joint applications and confidentiality

Where an application is made jointly, we may share information about the joint application between the applicants where this is reasonably necessary to provide the service.

A joint application does not mean that everything one applicant tells us will automatically be disclosed to the other. We may communicate separately with applicants and may withhold information where it:

• relates only to one applicant;

• concerns health, vulnerability or support needs;

• raises safeguarding, financial-abuse or coercion concerns;

• is confidential;

• relates to financial-crime controls; or

• should not be disclosed under data-protection law or another legal or regulatory obligation.

If you have concerns about information being shared with a joint applicant, tell us and we will discuss this with you privately where appropriate.

11. Information you give us

Our advice and the information supplied to providers depend on the accuracy and completeness of the information you give us. You must take reasonable care to answer questions honestly, accurately and completely and tell us about relevant changes before an application or policy is completed.

For insurance, inaccurate or incomplete information can affect underwriting, premiums, the validity of cover or the payment of a claim. The insurer will provide information about the questions you must answer and the consequences of a misrepresentation.

We may verify information using documents and lawful third-party sources, including credit reference, identity-verification and fraud-prevention services.

12. Fees, commission and other remuneration

12.1 First-charge mortgage advice

We do not charge you a broker fee for our first-charge mortgage advice and arrangement service. We are paid by the lender when a mortgage completes. The actual amount of lender commission will be disclosed in the relevant mortgage illustration or ESIS where required. If we ever introduce a broker fee for this service, we will tell you the amount before you decide whether to proceed, and no fee will apply to an application already in progress.

Lender commission rates can vary. Our recommendation process is designed to prevent remuneration from improperly influencing lender or product selection.

12.2 Secured-loan advice and arrangement

For secured loans, we charge a broker fee based on the gross loan amount. Where you choose to add the broker fee to the loan, the fee band is determined by the loan amount before the fee is added. The current fee schedule is:

The broker fee is payable only if the secured loan completes. We do not charge an upfront broker fee for a secured-loan application.

You may have the option to add the broker fee to the loan. If you do this, interest will be charged on the fee and the total amount you repay for the fee can be materially higher than the cash fee. We will disclose the cash fee and, where it is financed, the effect on the amount borrowed and total amount repayable before you proceed.

In addition to the broker fee, we currently receive a lender procuration fee at a standard rate of 2% of the secured-loan amount on completion. This is not charged to you separately but forms part of the lender's distribution cost. The actual amount of commission will be disclosed where required.

We assess the customer broker fee and lender procuration fee together when considering the value and potential conflicts arising from our remuneration.

12.3 Protection insurance

We do not charge you a separate advice fee for our protection advice and arrangement service. We receive commission from the insurer if a policy is arranged. Commission can vary by provider and product and may include initial and, in some cases, ongoing commission. We will provide the required remuneration disclosure and further information is available on request.

12.4 Home insurance referral

As explained in section 7, we may receive commission if you buy home insurance through our Uinsure referral. The current commission can be up to 27.5% of the insurance premium for standard buildings and contents policies.

12.5 Provider fees and other costs

Lenders, insurers and other third parties may charge their own fees, premiums, interest, early-repayment charges or other costs. These are not our broker fees. Relevant provider charges will be shown in the applicable illustration, ESIS, policy documents or other pre-contract information.

We do not refund fees or charges paid directly to a lender or other provider. Any refund is governed by that provider's terms and applicable law.

13. Cancelling our service and ending the relationship

You may ask us to stop work on a mortgage, secured-loan or protection application before completion, subject to any separate terms of the provider. Ending our intermediary service does not automatically cancel a mortgage, loan or insurance contract that has already been entered into.

Where you enter into a contract with us for our services at a distance, without meeting us face to face, you have the right to cancel that service contract without giving a reason within 14 calendar days. That period runs from the later of the date the contract is concluded and the date you receive the required contractual information. Cancelling our service contract does not by itself cancel any mortgage, loan or insurance contract you have entered into with a provider.

You can exercise any applicable cancellation right by contacting us in a durable medium, including by writing to the address in section 23 or by using the contact method we provide to you. Your notice only needs to make clear that you wish to cancel.

If you ask us to start providing services during a statutory cancellation period, the law may in some circumstances permit a proportionate charge for services actually provided. Our standard first-charge mortgage service has no direct broker fee, and our secured-loan broker fee is payable only on completion.

Insurance policies have their own cancellation rights and consequences. The insurer or intermediary responsible for the policy will provide those details.

You may opt out of RateWatch and other ongoing non-essential communications at any time. We may also end our service on reasonable notice, or immediately where continuing would be unlawful, unsafe or inappropriate.

14. Financial-crime checks

We are required to maintain appropriate systems and controls to identify, assess and mitigate financial-crime risk and to comply with applicable legal and regulatory obligations.

We may therefore carry out identity, fraud, sanctions and other financial-crime checks and may ask for information or evidence about matters such as your identity, address, income, expenditure, source of funds, source of wealth or the purpose of a transaction where appropriate.

Checks may include electronic verification, credit-reference or fraud-prevention information and other lawful sources. We may delay, refuse or stop a transaction where required or permitted by law or where we reasonably consider that a material financial-crime risk cannot be resolved.

There may be circumstances in which the law prevents us from explaining the reason for a check, delay or decision.

15. Data protection and privacy

Trussle Lab Ltd is the controller responsible for personal information used for the services described in these Terms. Our Privacy Notice explains what information we collect, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and your rights.

The current Privacy Notice is available at better.co.uk/privacy. Joint-applicant information is handled in accordance with the confidentiality and data-protection principles in section 10 and our Privacy Notice.

Questions about personal information can be sent to [email protected].

16. Regulatory status and FSCS protection

Trussle Lab Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 924229.

Eligible customers may be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if we are unable to meet our obligations. Whether protection applies, and the amount available, depends on the type of business and the circumstances of the claim.

Protected home-finance mediation is currently covered at 100% of an eligible claim up to £85,000 per person, per firm.

For protected non-investment insurance distribution, some categories - including eligible pure-protection claims - are protected at 100% with no monetary cap; other eligible insurance-distribution claims may be protected at 90% with no monetary cap.

Further information is available from the FSCS at fscs.org.uk.

Where a mortgage or other activity is unregulated, some FCA, Financial Ombudsman Service and FSCS protections may not apply. We will explain the regulatory status of the service where this is relevant.

17. Complaints

We want to provide a high standard of service. If you are dissatisfied with our service or believe something has gone wrong, please tell us.

You can complain by:

• emailing [email protected];

• writing to Complaints Team, Trussle Lab Ltd, 1st Floor, Wellington House, Wellington Street, Cardiff, CF11 9BE; or

• raising the complaint with your adviser or another member of our team.

We will acknowledge complaints promptly. For complaints subject to the FCA's standard DISP timetable, our acknowledgement will explain that we will send a written response within eight weeks, and we will keep you informed of progress while we investigate.

If we resolve an eligible complaint by the end of the third business day after receipt, we may send you a Summary Resolution Communication in accordance with FCA rules.

If you are dissatisfied with our final response, or we do not provide the required response within the applicable time, you may be entitled to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Eligibility and time limits apply. Further information is available at financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

A complaint about our use of personal information can also be sent to [email protected]. Our Privacy Notice explains the separate right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

18. Website and digital services

Information provided on our public website, calculators, learning content and other general tools is for general information unless we expressly state that we are providing personalised regulated advice.

You should not treat general website content, rate tables, calculators or automated alerts as a personal recommendation. A personalised recommendation is provided only through the relevant advised process.

We take reasonable care to keep our website and digital services available and accurate, but product rates, criteria and third-party information can change. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability or that general website content will always be complete or current.

You are responsible for keeping your account credentials and devices reasonably secure and for telling us promptly if you suspect unauthorised access.

19. Intellectual property

Unless stated otherwise, the intellectual-property rights in Better.co.uk's website, digital tools, branding, content and materials are owned by or licensed to us.

You may use our materials for your personal use in connection with our services. You must not copy, distribute, commercially exploit or create derivative works from our materials except where law permits or we have given written permission.

20. Our responsibilities and limitations

We will provide our regulated services with the level of care and skill required by applicable law and FCA rules.

We are not responsible for decisions made by lenders, insurers, credit reference agencies, conveyancers or other independent third parties, although we remain responsible for our own acts and omissions and for any responsibility that the law or FCA rules place on us.

We cannot guarantee that a product will remain available, that an application will be accepted, that a property transaction will complete or that a future rate or saving will be achieved.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, or reduces any right or protection you have under applicable law or FCA rules.

21. General contractual terms

21.1 Instructions and communications

We may accept instructions by telephone, email, through our digital services or by another agreed method. We may ask you to confirm an instruction in writing where this is reasonably necessary to avoid misunderstanding or for security.

21.2 Transfer of our agreement

We may transfer our rights under these Terms to another entity. We may also transfer our obligations under these Terms to another entity as part of a group reorganisation, business transfer, financing or similar transaction, provided that the transfer does not reduce your contractual or regulatory rights. You agree in advance to any such transfer of our obligations on those conditions, and this paragraph operates as your consent to the transferee taking our place under these Terms. We will give you notice of any transfer of our obligations before it takes effect, or as soon as reasonably practicable afterwards where advance notice is not possible.[EV7]

21.3 Severability

If a provision of these Terms is found to be unlawful or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will continue to apply.

21.4 Third-party rights

Unless these Terms expressly state otherwise, a person who is not a party to these Terms has no right to enforce them under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

21.5 Governing law and language

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales and are provided in English. If you are a consumer resident in another part of the United Kingdom, you may also have rights under the mandatory laws applying where you live and rights to bring proceedings in the courts available to you under applicable law.

22. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms where reasonably necessary, for example to reflect changes in law or regulation, FCA requirements, our products or services, technology, suppliers, operating arrangements or group structure.

Where a change materially affects the rights or obligations of an existing customer, we will take reasonable steps to give notice before the change takes effect. A change will not retrospectively remove rights that have already accrued.

The latest version will be published on Better.co.uk together with its effective date.

23. Contact details