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All for one and one for all


In last month’s Mortgage Introducer we threw down our own gauntlet at the feet of those in the mortgage industry. But far from being a challenge to battle against one another, instead we said: “work together”. Sarah Davidson examines whether working together really can work


In the days of old, when a knight of the realm was insulted by an opponent, he threw down his gauntlet at the foot of his enemy to challenge him to a duel. If the enemy accepted he would pick up the gauntlet as a signal. Battle commenced. We might have moved on from the days of medieval jousting and sword fighting, but metaphorical gauntlets are thrown down day-in day-out and battle in business can be just as violent as battle on the field. The tools these days are words not daggers but corporate warfare has been bloody over the past three years. Companies have died unheroic deaths, CEOs have limped from the scene and victors leave the field a scarred survivor. In last month’s Mortgage Introducer,


we threw down our own gauntlet at the feet of those in the mortgage industry. But far from being a challenge to battle against one another, instead we said: “work together”.


As the mortgage market limps on, with 22 mortgAge introducer JULY 2010


the occasional glimmer of hope casting a ray of sunshine on what is undoubtedly still a pretty bleak outlook, tensions are rising, tempers are fraying and out-and- out arguments seem to be springing up all over the shop. There have been moments when we seem in danger of business dissolving into downright anarchy.


Dual pricing has brokers hopping from foot to foot, the power balance between lenders and brokers has swung like a see-saw with lenders’ feet firmly on the ground and brokers feeling they’re being dangled on high like small children crying out “it’s not fair”.


Branch-based advisers and lenders separated themselves from the intermediary community, and the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries’ (AMI) response to the FSA’s Mortgage Market Review locked horns with the Council of Mortgage (CML) Lenders on which advisers should be listed on the individual register. AMI said everyone,


the CML said only intermediaries. AMI won.


In June’s editorial we said: “Whatever the final outcome for the individual register, dual pricing and the lender broker balance, the fight for freedom, fairness and responsibility is a goal worthy of serious discussion. Lenders and brokers should form their own coalition partnership and work together to achieve it.”


Mortgage Introducer has spent June in discussion with some of the most influential “knights” of the mortgage realm in an attempt to understand if the industry has picked up that gauntlet, or if it is lying underfoot in the mud. We’re pleased to report, the vast majority of those knights have decided it’s time to take a seat at the round table in Camelot, and have it out.


Who’s responsible? Perhaps most encouraging is the union of the mortgage market’s trade bodies


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