The development has further underlined the growing confusion amongst intermediaries surrounding the ability of lenders to get KFIs up and running in time for ‘Mortgage Day.’
David Bitner, head of product operations at B&B, said: “We have postponed the process of appointing any lenders on to our retail panel and will not be making any changes to it for the time being. Basically, we don’t even know what lenders will still be in the market next week. We are not going to stick our necks out.”
Bitner went on to say: “I don’t have total faith that all lenders will have KFIs ready by ‘Mortgage Day’. Some are going live this weekend but in our opinion this is leaving it quite late.
“It may indicate they are having problems generally with regulation. If you can’t get on to a lender’s website to get accurate KFIs that is a problem for us in terms of cost and doing business with that lender.”
Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at Charcol, said: “B&B will probably continue using its current retail panel until it feels it’s appropriate to make the changes. If any of the lenders on its current panel can’t produce compliant KFIs then B&B could still streamline the panel and end up with the amount of lender members it is aiming to reduce the panel to.
“This shows that lenders who are not ready are at a competitive disadvantage.”
