He will also be suspended for three months
Hou Yin “Jeffrey” Ho, a mortgage broker from British Columbia, will pay more than $50,000 to the BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) following the submission of misleading applications to lenders, as reported in an article by CTV News.
Ho admitted that he conducted mortgage business in a way that was prejudicial to the interest of the public, according to the consent agreement that was posted on the BCFSA website.
Misconduct in mortgage businesses
The document further stated that there were seven instances where the misconduct occurred between September 2014 and April 2015. The rest occurred in 2017. Ho or his assistant were found to have submitted applications that did not state that the borrowers were looking for concurrent financing to potentially buy other properties in two of the early cases.
The other five cases also faced a similar problem, in addition to having statements that said the properties were owner-occupied even though Ho may have already known that the properties would be converted into rental properties should the purchase of the other property be completed.
Meanwhile, the misconduct cases in 2017 were prepared by Ho’s assistant and they all came from the mortgage broker’s inability to exercise proper due diligence in supervising his assistant’s work, it was stated.
Ho’s assistant reportedly submitted three false tenancy agreements. Two of them were signed by the borrower and were presented to lenders as if they were authentic. The assistant was also unable to include information regarding a borrower that was looking for concurrent financing for a different purchase and only stated that there were two different monthly rental income totals for the same suite.
Due to his misconduct, Ho will pay $50,000 to the BCFSA as an administrative penalty as well as an additional $5,000 for partial investigation costs. He also faces a three-month suspension of his registration under the provincial Mortgage Brokers Act.
