AMI said the project would benchmark how brokers explained risk, addressed borrower needs and arrived at recommendations. This can then be used as part of the FOS’s process in judging how a good intermediary went about their job.
Chris Cummings, director of AMI, said: “The role of the Ombudsman will be critical to the reputation of our market. We are a market characterised by a low number of complaints, low risk and low financial loss.
“Looking at the MCAS statistics, last year’s financial redress was only between £2,000-£3,000 for complainants.
“Sadly, it is one of the difficulties of moving from voluntary to statutory regulation that a market receives more complaints but this needn’t mean our market is heading for a fall.”
Cummings added: “The benefit of this benchmarking project is that it measures performance against today’s standards, not those applying when a complaint arrives at the Ombudsman’s desk because, the strange thing is, the standard of regulation tends to increase year upon year.”
Cummings said the project would take time to come to fruition as it needs the participation of the whole industry. “We only have one chance to get this right. It’s no good consulting with just six or seven figures in the industry to then find out the rest of the market work in a completely different way,” he commented.
Alison Hoyland, spokesperson at the FOS, said: “We have been talking to AMI and other parties about this but we are just in the discussion stages at the moment.
“This is something we are more than happy to be part of to ensure the new rules aren’t applied retrospectively.”
