He said: “Both the national and international regulators have failed to do the man on the Clapham omnibus test. What actually is it the ordinary person out there wants? I speak to people and they say they want to be able to buy a home and move house. They don’t say to me, what I really want is a European Standardised Information Sheet or an IDD.
“We are coming out of a fragile economic situation and there’s nothing coming along at the moment that will help with that. What I do see is a lot of extra cost, which will only come from the consumer. I’m afraid we may be so focused on regulation and the cost of regulation we won’t actually be looking at what people actually want, which is help to buy a house.”
Winter added that building societies had also been putting affordability at the heart of mortgage lending for 150 years and that he was interested to hear the FSA say earlier in the conference that it was hoping the Mortgage Market Review would achieve this aim.
He also welcomed the FSA’s decision to publish the whole MMR again in its entirety in the summer.
