The Housing Finance Corporation Broadens Capital Markets Access for Housing Associations

The Housing Finance Corporation has announced an expansion of its capital markets offering with a series of new programmes and funding structures designed to broaden access to long-term finance for housing associations across the UK.

In late 2025, The Housing Finance Corporation enhanced its capital markets presence with a new multi-issuer Euro Medium-Term Note (EMTN) programme. The move represented a significant scaling up of the Corporation’s capacity to support the UK affordable housing sector, complementing its existing financing vehicles.

The changes announced today are intended to enhance support for the sector, broaden access to capital markets funding for a wider range of housing association, and better accommodate increasingly complex group structures. As part of the enhanced offering, The Housing Finance Corporation has introduced new funding programmes designed to offer increased support to housing associations across all four nations of the UK.

The expanded arrangements also allow lending to treasury vehicles that on-lend to not-for-profit registered providers, creating additional flexibility for housing groups operating mixed organisational structures.

Greater flexibility in funding structures

Alongside the programme expansion, additional bond structures have been introduced to give borrowers greater flexibility in managing their funding requirements. These include zero-coupon bonds, allowing housing associations to defer interest payments during the life of the bond, with repayment made as a single payment at maturity. The structure can help organisations manage cashflow during periods of significant investment or development activity.

New issuer structures have also been introduced, that allow commercial property assets to be used as security, expanding the range of assets that can support capital markets funding.

Fast and Flexible access to funding

The enhanced offering also includes the expansion of an Instalment Fee Facility (IFF), which will be available across all funding programmes.

The facility enables housing associations to put loan agreements in place ahead of funding, giving them the option to access capital markets rapidly, sometimes within days, when conditions are most favourable and/or when liquidity is required.

Under the structure, organisations:

• Secure liquidity
• Retain flexibility over timing, maturity and size of drawdown
• Gain access to facilities for up to 36 months
• Pay a reduced arrangement fee until funds are drawdown
• Net-off fees already paid against the final arrangement fee at drawdown

Andrea Jelic, Senior Director, Capital Markets, at The Housing Finance Corporation:

“Housing associations across the UK are facing growing pressure to deliver new homes, invest in existing stock and meet evolving regulatory expectations. Our new funding programmes are designed to give them greater flexibility, choice and speed when accessing capital markets finance, so they can continue to invest and deliver at scale.

By broadening the range of structures available and opening access to a wider group of organisations across all four nations, we’re strengthening our mission to provide affordable finance for the sector, supporting housing associations to respond confidently to changing financial and operational demands.”

–ENDS–

About The Housing Finance Corporation

The Housing Finance Corporation has been the UK’s leading affordable housing aggregator for more than three decades, providing innovative funding solutions for 149 housing associations across all four nations of the UK. The Housing Finance Corporation has amassed £8.4bn loan book to date and continues to expand its range of financial products to serve the needs of the social housing sector. The Housing Finance Corporation has made significant contributions toward solving the UK’s affordable housing crisis, having funded 32,000+ homes under Affordable Housing Finance Plc (AHF), which oversaw the government’s initial Affordable Housing Guarantee Scheme. The aggregator launched Blend Funding Plc (Blend) in 2018 which has grown to provide committed facilities to 35 housing associations totalling over £1.95bn. In February 2025, the organisation announced the launch of a groundbreaking £150m partnership with the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to finance retrofitting of affordable homes alongside its new lending vehicle THFC Sustainable Finance Plc (TSF).

For more information: https://thehousingfinancecorp.com/