The Smiths, a fork, Man City and another Contracting Award win

Stop me (oh, o-oh, stop me). Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before…
…but what do Freelancer Financials Contracting Award wins and a fork have in common? Four straight, that’s what.

Yes, we’ve won “Best Contractor Mortgage Provider or Broker” for the fourth consecutive year, marking our fifth victory in six years. Only Man City have done that…and they were cheating*!

Anyway, football, The Smiths and cutlery aside, here’s how we did it:

Why this one matters

The Best Contractor Mortgage Provider or Broker category has grown over the years. In 2019, the shortlist contained only three firms. This year’s event saw us up against five other deserving finalists.

Winning the award against such stiff opposition is hard. Getting our hat-trick last year was unbelievable. Keeping it for four years straight is unprecedented, and says so much more about our consistency and commitment to innovation in our market than words ever could…
…or does it?

Beyond the awards: what our clients say

We know that the Contractor UK forum is littered with praise for our services. But people advocating what we do have spilt out onto the larger web.

Last month, we received our 1,000th five-star Google review. Coming a month before the awards, this milestone reinforces our consistency and reflects what the Best Contractor Mortgage Provider or Broker award acknowledges.

We now have well over 1,000 Google reviews ‘in the wild’ for all our brokers. But this one perhaps sums up what we do best:

Five stars is simply not enough for Archie! Before finding him, I spoke to three different mortgage brokers who all turned us away. They insisted we wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage because my wife’s visa was ending soon, she didn’t have 12 months of payslips, and she was on a fixed-term contract with only 4 months left.

Where other brokers saw impossible roadblocks, Archie saw solutions. He took the time to understand our exact situation, navigated every detail expertly, and fought to get our mortgage application approved and fully offered.

You can read Zeeshan’s full review here.

The people behind the victories

And talking of Archie, two of our brokers have recently been singled out for praise by authoritative industry bodies.

In June of last year, George Yerou, our Head of Mortgage Sales, won Next Intelligence’s “Residential Broker of the Year”.

Then, earlier this year, Archie Hogg won the same company’s Rising Star award.

And, for sure: it’s easy to get caught up in these individual accolades. But at the heart of Freelancer Financials, we must acknowledge the team as a whole. From the brokers and their admins to the protection and compliance teams, we all strive for perfection.

Many of the brokers have been with us from the start, over twenty years ago. As such, pulling in the same direction has become second nature.

This synchronicity and synergy are bringing our CEO John Yerou‘s vision to life. Payment structures should never be a barrier to getting the mortgage you deserve. Thanks to his innovation and intervention, we now have over 30 contractor-friendly lenders willing to assess contractors on their true earning power.

Acknowledgements and thanks

We’re under no illusion that we achieved these wins alone. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the awards’ organisers, ContractorUK, our partners and, last but by no means least, our clients, both those new to us and those who come back to us time and again.

We must also acknowledge the other worthy finalists who also push us towards bigger and better innovations every year:

• Brookson Financial
• Cleerly
• Contractor Financial
• My Contractor Broker
• WIS Mortgages and Insurance Services

Final thoughts

Okay. We’ve written this post with a degree of flippancy, but there’s an underlying seriousness that we’ll close out on.

It’s not the reviews that win us these awards. It’s our commitment to making sure that everyone with a non-standard or complex income gets a fair hearing when they apply for a mortgage.

And do you know what? The bottom line is, we’re very good at it. So, even if you think you’re unmortgageable, stop right there. Your dream of owning a home may be closer than you think.

We’ve grown from being the best contractor mortgage provider to incorporating everyone in the flexible workforce. And we don’t plan to stop innovating just yet.

What will the rest of 2026/2027 involve? There’s plenty more in the pipeline. But for now, we’ll just say “Watch this space.” We’re not done winning awards, not by a long shot! Thank you all.