sensitivities around anonymity. That is something we can appreciate and there is the option to report something on an anonymous basis to us. PB: You’ve got to be absolutely clear before you start throwing bricks. Mike Fitzgerald: You’ve got to be very careful if you’re a broker. We have other brokers in our town and we have an impression that they may be doing something untoward but we’re not sure. You’ve got to be very strong and have very firm evidence otherwise your firm could be closed down by legal action. If we had firm evidence then we would report them. Dean Mason: I’d totally echo that. It’s a very incestuous industry. If there are a few brokers within an area, as much as I appreciate the FSA doing everything they can to keep things anonymous, in a small town things can get around. RK: I understand that there has to be a balance but I just don’t share that view at all. When people are engaged in sharp practices there should be that ability to report. We need to get away from this practice of acceptance otherwise we’ll never eradicate fraud. PB: I’m advocating not throwing bricks around. So I’m not advocating being grey on any of these issues. But there are also the practical realities. If you say that someone has done something wrong, you need to be clear otherwise it would be unstructured and there wouldn’t be enough resources to investigate all those cases on an individual basis. Where you’ve got proper evidence good and clear evidence that absolutely should get reported. The commitment back from the regulator should be that it gets enforced. DM: I’d also like to point out that whilst it is our duty as responsible brokers to do this, our priority is our clients. We’re not really looking at other brokers. Obviously some people around the table, their job is
to keep an eye on these types of things. RK: Our priority is our clients but I think there’s a wider priority which is confidence in our market. Without that we won’t have clients. RS: It’s all about due process. Making sure there is an appropriate structure where a claim has been made and can be adequately verified and proven and then the appropriate action taken and there is some form of regular appeal. I don’t want to live in a society where somebody can just be taken off at the knees because an application is not in the right place. While we’re working on getting rid of bad things in the industry it has to be in a way that follows a due process with the right to appeal.
Martin Reynolds: That’s the transparency bit though. You don’t know why you’ve been taken off a panel and sometimes it’s because of suspected fraud so therefore they can’t be told and we understand that. If it’s one of the top six then your livelihood has been taken away by some potentially non-fraudulent reason. NS: It’s very unusual now for a broker to be thrown off with no inkling at all why. That has only gotten better by working with the Council of Mortgage Lenders, individual lenders and brokers. You’ve got to work as one otherwise it’s not going to work. One question I really want to ask the FSA is what are the particular things are you concerned about with brokers and what can we do to help you guys? TS: In terms of reporting it’s all about building up an intelligence profile. You might not have the full answer or the full case but if three or four people raise suspicions about one person that is all logged at lenders networks and the FSA and that certainly builds a critical mass of suspicion that might trigger an investigation. So it may not be you having a full understanding and a full case
yourself, it’s about adding to the intelligence profile. In terms of where we are with the mortgage brokers; we have made significant strides with all aspects of the industry to help combat mortgage fraud and that’s very important to recognise. But we are at a time when credit is hard to come by and there are a few comments around about trying to get people the loans that they’re after; the use of buy-to-let or the use of bridging loans, those sorts of issues. These are the sorts of issues which brokers have to be very careful about so they don’t seduce themselves or convince themselves that fraud is acceptable. JH: The point is that if there is an opportunity out there for the market to become distorted then somebody is going to take that opportunity. The guardians
Join the debate @mortgagechat mortgage introducer JANUARY 2012 37
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