Mortgage advisor companies should be aware that the ‘judgement day’ deadline to implement the Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) Treating Customers Fairly initiative is less than ten weeks away and all mortgage firms must comply.
The FSA stated all firms:
“must be able to demonstrate by the end of December 2008 through its management behaviours that it consistently treats its customers fairly”
There was an interim deadline in March for companies to have the required management information in place, however, as we reported in an earlier article only 22 per cent of mortgage brokers achieved this. Many mortgage advisors are unsure whether they are for or against TCF.
Mortgage advisors should take this December deadline seriously. Sales Director at MortgageStream, Paul Holden, said:
“There can be no doubt that the FSA are committed to TCF and have already evidenced their willingness to dish out severe financial ramifications for firms who fail to make the grade. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is an issue that must be taken seriously as the scale of fines being imposed could easily destroy a brokers’ business.”
According to MortgageStream, many mortgage advisors are not aware that they do already have most of the detail and data they require to meet the requirements and many data management systems have the capability to comply with the TCF requirements if they are set up and used correctly.
TCF is not a new initiative and has been discussed for some time. Newly qualified mortgage advisors should really have been aware of it for some time as it has been discussed in CeMAP training courses, and we have discussed how the requirements fit in with the CeMAP syllabus and what the TCF is previously.