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Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI)

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What you'll get

You’ll get help paying the interest on your mortgage or loan.

Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) usually helps pay the interest on up to £200,000 of your loan or mortgage. However, you can only get up to £100,000 if either:

If you’re already getting SMI and move to Pension Credit within 12 weeks of stopping your other benefits, you’ll still get help with interest on up to £200,000.

Each year, you’ll get 3.66% of the money you owe on your loan or mortgage. This percentage might go up or down.

Example

You’re on Universal Credit and have £250,000 of your mortgage left to pay. You’re eligible for SMI for up to £200,000.

At the current SMI rate, you’ll get a loan of 3.66% of £200,000 across a year. This is £7,320 which will be paid as £610 per month.

What you’ll pay back

SMI is paid as a loan. You’ll need to repay the money you get with interest when you sell or transfer ownership of your home (unless you’re moving the loan to another property).

If you want to pay the loan back more quickly, you can also make voluntary repayments.

Find out more about how you repay your SMI loan.

How SMI is paid

SMI is normally paid direct to your lender.

You can ask to stop getting SMI at any time by contacting the office that pays your benefit.

When SMI payments can start and how often they’re paid depends on what benefit you’re claiming.

If you get Pension Credit

Payments can start from the date you start getting Pension Credit. SMI will be paid every 4 weeks.

If you get Universal Credit

Payments can start if you’ve got Universal Credit for 3 months in a row.

If you move to Universal Credit within a month of another benefit ending, payments can start when you’ve spent 3 months in total getting that previous benefit and Universal Credit.

SMI will be paid monthly.

If you get income-based ESA

Payments can start when you’ve claimed for 39 weeks in a row.

View a printable version of the whole guide

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