to be pissed off that mortgage lender wants me to explain my transactions?

[TiaMariaandSpringCleaning]

Im about to move mortgage providers. Have a very good credit history, no bad debts, good equity etc - ie not a high risk borrower or anything. The new lender has written to ask me and DH to provide bank statements with written explanations for any transaction over £250 (in or out).

I cant fathom what possible reason they have to require this information, does anyone know? WIBU to explain my transactions as "buying jelly beans" (£320), "putting tenners down a drain for the hell of it" (£400), giant sex toys (£260) and so on? Can they refuse to lend to be because of an excessive jelly bean addiction? Or is there a good reason for this that I dont appreciate?

Also how many months bank statements do they want?

Ours looked back 3 months (We moved our mortgage to the bank we're with for almost everything else) and from what they said I got the impression they aren't really looking at your spending habits. They're looking for stuff they need to consider as part of your monthly outgoings. Tbf mine didn't just go through the over £250 ones, I think they went through anything over about £50.

So, for example, you might pay your childminder monthly by cheque or bank transfer. That wouldn't show if they just looked at your direct debits and (in theory) you could claim a mortgage based on two salaries by lying that you had family providing free childcare to get a bigger mortgage approved.

Update - spoke to them today and franky, if they had put what they said in the phone into their letter, there'd never have been a problem.

All they actually want is a single month's statement to coincide with a single payslip from within the last few months I also need to give them (I think I've always been asked for 3 months before, but ok) and a declaration as to whether any transaction over £250 is a one off (in which case i don't need to say what it is) or a regular payment (in which case i just need to say how often it's made - not what it's for).

The man I spoke to was lovely and volunteered his opinion that the standard letter is very misleading and has led to lots of complaints about being too intrusive, and even where customers have supplied the information they asked for, it doesn't meet their needs (he gave the example that people were writing things like 'cleaner', which the lender was assuming was a regular payment, but when they queried it with the customer, it was actually a new vacuum or whatever. Apparently the letter is being changed.

I did point out that they have only asked for information about the account i get my salary paid to (and same for DH), and said that i have another account that we pay most bills from (and volunteered to send information about it too) but he said it's not necessary which sort of negates the argument that this is to check what my outgoings etc are, but there we go!!!

I had to do this recently. Rationalise it; they are not going to take this information home to share with anyone. They don't know you. It is utterly boring for them and just a check box. I personally wouldn't give up on a mortgage application that you've probably spent 2 hours on already for this reason. It wasn't YBS or Chelsea was it?

I've just had to explain some of mine and they weren't anything like as much as £250 - it was my regular payments to sponsor a girl in Kenya which presumably they thought might be me paying off some other debts I hadn't told them about or something, I don't know.

I was a bit taken aback but it's up to them - they're planning to lend dh and me a huge wodge of cash, they can count the small change at the bottom of my handbag if they like!

Goodness anyone would think they lent money out of the goodness of their hearts and DIDN'T make loads of money out of lending someone a mortgage.

Well, equally, they're not asking the questions just to be annoying, it's because they believe it helps them to assess the risk of the loan.