Published 2026-07-20 · Contractor Mortgage Guide · Written and reviewed by Phillip Wakeling-Smith (CeMAP)

RSU and stock compensation mortgages UK: which lenders actually count them

Quick answer: Most mainstream lenders either ignore RSU income entirely or apply a heavy haircut to it — this is still a specialist and boutique HNW-broker corner of the market, not a mainstream one. On broker-reported positions (not lenders' own published criteria — see the sourcing note throughout), NatWest is said to count vested RSUs on loans over £600k at 50% of a two-year vesting average, wanting evidence the units were actually cashed in; Skipton is reported to apply a 50–60% haircut and treat RSUs as "non-guaranteed other income"; and HSBC, Metro, Hodge, Kensington and Co-op are reported to consider RSU income case-by-case with 2–3 years of documented vesting history. If you're an IT contractor with RSUs sitting alongside day-rate income — your own or a partner's — the day-rate side of the case is usually the stronger, better-understood lever. Read this before you spend broker time chasing RSU income you may not need.

Why RSUs are a harder sell than they look

A Restricted Stock Unit is a promise of shares, not a promise of cash, and it only becomes real income at two separate moments: when it vests (you legally own the shares) and, separately, when you sell them (you have cash). Salaried income arrives as a predictable monthly figure on a payslip. RSU income arrives as an irregular lump, denominated in a moving share price, often in a currency that isn't sterling, with a vesting schedule that can change if you change employer. Every one of those differences is something an underwriter has to specifically build a policy for — and most simply haven't bothered, because the applicant population is small relative to salary and bonus income.

That's why this corner of the market is currently owned by boutique brokers serving high-net-worth tech and finance employees, rather than by generalist lenders with a published RSU policy on their intermediary site. If you're searching "RSU mortgage UK" expecting a clean answer, the honest one is: it depends heavily on which lender you land with, and the lender list is short.

Vested, held, or sold — lenders only ever look at vested

Get this distinction straight before you talk to anyone:

• Unvested RSUs — still subject to your employer's vesting schedule and service conditions. No lender counts these as income; they're a promise, not an asset.
• Vested and held — you own the shares outright, but haven't sold them. Some lenders will consider these as an asset or as income evidence; others specifically want proof of a sale, not just a vesting event, before they'll count anything.
• Vested and sold — the shares have been sold and the cash has landed in your account. This is the strongest form of evidence for lenders who are cautious about counting paper gains, and it's reportedly what NatWest wants to see: units actually cashed in, not just vested on paper.

Which of the three a given lender wants varies, and it isn't always stated clearly on broker-facing criteria pages — confirm directly rather than assuming "vested" is enough everywhere.

The evidence trail lenders ask for

Where a lender does consider RSU income, expect to be asked for most of this:

• Grant letters setting out the original award and vesting schedule.
• Vesting confirmations or broker statements (from the platform your employer uses — Fidelity, E*TRADE, Schwab and similar) showing vest events actually occurring on schedule.
• Payslips showing vest events, where your employer runs vested RSU value through payroll (common practice, and useful because it puts a HMRC-taxed figure on record rather than relying on a share-price snapshot).
• A vesting history of 2–3 years, per the lenders reported to consider RSUs case-by-case (HSBC, Metro, Hodge, Kensington, Co-op) — a single vesting event with no track record is a much harder sell than a pattern.

Because share prices move, lenders that do count RSUs tend to average across two years rather than take the most recent vest at face value, and some apply a further stress to that average — which is functionally where the NatWest and Skipton haircuts above come from. Don't build an affordability plan around a single good vesting year.

Non-GBP RSUs: a haircut on a haircut

Most tech-sector RSUs — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and most US-listed employers generally — are denominated in US dollars, not sterling. That collides with a second set of rules: foreign-currency income is routinely haircut on its own account for exchange-rate risk, separately from whatever haircut applies to the RSU income itself. In practice that can mean a dollar-denominated RSU award gets discounted twice before it reaches an affordability calculation — once for being RSU income, once for being non-GBP income. If your RSUs are in a foreign currency, ask specifically how a lender treats FX risk on variable income, not just how it treats RSUs in general.

Worth knowing as context rather than as a lending change you can rely on yet: the FCA's CP26/18 consultation (published 9 June 2026) proposes clearer handling of variable and irregular income in affordability assessments, including guidance on non-monthly "regular contractual payments" — RSU vesting is exactly the kind of irregular, event-based income that guidance is aimed at. It's a live consultation, not settled policy, so treat it as direction of travel rather than a current rule.

RSUs as deposit vs RSUs as income — don't conflate them

These are genuinely different problems, and the deposit route is far simpler:

• Selling vested RSUs to fund a deposit is straightforward from a mortgage-application point of view — it's a source-of-funds question (where did the cash come from, is it clean), not an income-assessment question. Most lenders handle "I sold shares" as deposit evidence without difficulty, provided you can show the sale and the trail of funds.
• Using ongoing RSU vesting as income to boost your borrowing multiple is the harder, lender-specific problem covered above.

If your RSUs only need to solve a deposit gap, you likely don't need any of the lender-by-lender RSU-income research at all — just keep clean records of the sale. One planning note, not advice: selling vested shares is normally a capital gains tax event, so get that timing checked by an accountant before selling a large tranche purely to fund a deposit.

When RSU income isn't worth the friction

If your day-rate or salaried income already covers the loan you need, adding RSU income to the application can slow underwriting down for little or no gain — extra documentation requests, an extra round of verification, and a narrower shortlist of lenders who'll even look at it. Run your core income through the day-rate calculator first if you're a contractor: many IT contractors hold RSUs from a prior employer, a parallel part-time role, or a spouse's job rather than their main contract income, and in a lot of those cases the day-rate side of the application already does the job on its own. Only chase the RSU documentation if the day-rate (or salaried) figure alone falls short of what you need to borrow.

Do this in order

1. Work out whether you actually need RSU income counted, or whether your core income already covers the loan — check with the day-rate calculator if contracting is your main income, or the free affordability check for a whole-of-market view either way.
2. If you're a contractor with RSUs on the side, read our IT contractor mortgages guide and the day-rate mortgages explainer first — day-rate income treatment is better documented and more consistent across lenders than RSU treatment.
3. If RSU income is genuinely needed, gather grant letters, broker statements and payslip evidence covering at least two years before you apply, and check current positions against our lender tables or with a whole-of-market broker experienced in stock-compensation cases.
4. If your RSUs are non-GBP, ask explicitly how the lender treats FX risk on top of RSU treatment — the two haircuts aren't the same conversation.

RSU treatment described here is drawn from broker-reported secondary sources — brokers' summaries of lender appetite, not lenders' own published criteria pages verified directly this session — and this is a market where positions vary by loan size, case size and individual underwriter discretion more than most mainstream lending. Confirm the current position for your specific award structure and currency directly with the lender or a whole-of-market broker experienced in stock-compensation cases before relying on any figure above. Lending criteria in this niche change without much public notice. This article is information, not financial advice, and doesn't constitute a recommendation to use any particular lender.