Last week Mortgage Introducer reported that the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries will work together to write down in a formal document, the roles and responsibilities of lenders and brokers ahead of the FSA reporting on the Mortgage Market Review in the autumn.
Peter Williams, executive chairman of IMLA, the trade body for intermediary lenders, says it was responsible for instigating this process, and that it will play a pivotal role in drawing up the document because it is ideally placed to understand the lender broker relationship.
Williams said: “The work is three-way between IMLA, AMI and CML and was initiated by IMLA reflecting its primary concern with the intermediary channel.
“Although it is about tackling an agenda that emerges strongly from the MMR there is long standing need to clarify accountabilities and responsibilities – for too long the debate has been about who owns the customer as if there was a choice - lender or broker. In fact at times one or the other or neither. This highlights up the complexity of the issues.”
Williams says being clearer about accountabilities and responsibilities will help the lender broker relationship, help borrowers and help the mortgage market and regulator.
He said currently the three trade bodies are working on a draft with a view to further meetings to finalise the document, which Coogan referred to as a “coalition agreement”.
Williams said: “We are trying to tease out the business to business components from the TCF elements so it can be made clearer. We want to make sure it can be a useable document, not something that simply goes on the shelf.
“Ultimately a lot of what goes on between brokers and lenders is a commercial relationship and this is captured in the legal agreements between them.
"The IMLA/AMI/CML guidance will not seek to interfere with that. It will be aimed at setting out in simple terms who does what. It might then sit as a guide behind those agreements.
“Clearly this has to be signed off by lenders and brokers and we have to steer a careful path between high level principles and detailed guidance.
"We are making good progress but there is still quite a lot to do.”
Williams added that for IMLA this is an important piece of work which he hopes will stand at the heart of good lender broker relationships and which will demonstrate clearly the industry’s willingness to take forward important agendas.
