Edeus, the specialist mortgage lender, is offering borrowers a discount of up to 8 per cent if they redeem their home loans and take them elsewhere.

The offer from Edeus, which deals in sub-prime, self-certificated and buy-to-let mortgages, has been triggered by the credit crunch.

Edeus used to generate cash by selling its loans to other financial groups but, in the past year, demand for such loans has dried up.

Organisations prepared to take on the loans are demanding such high discounts that Alan Cleary, managing director of Edeus, has decided it would be cheaper to go directly to borrowers.

He said: “We are offering customers a discount of up to 8 per cent if they redeem their mortgages now. This means that, on a £100,000 loan, they would have to pay back only £92,000, with no exit fees or early redemption charges.”

The offer is being made to 400 customers, representing about 10 per cent of Edeus’s mortgage book. The discount offered will vary from 8 per cent to between 2 or 3 per cent, with the average being struck at about 5 per cent.

The figure will depend on the market value of the loan if it were to be sold to another provider.

Mr Cleary said: “No one has tried this before because, until recently, there were always plenty of financial groups ready to take on our loans at a premium — we had no need to offer inducements for people to take them off our books. If the experiment is a success, we will extend the offer to more customers.”