The FSA told Mortgage Introducer that it is mid-way through the mystery shopping exercise and that the findings should be published later in the summer.
The exercise is purely designed to ascertain whether brokers are giving customers the disclosure documents at the right time. The FSA said the purpose of these mystery shops was not to review the actual contents and quality of the documents.
Robin Gordon-Walker, spokesperson at the FSA, said: “We cannot comment on the general feel of the findings yet. But the undertaking of this mystery shopping will have been done on its own basis.
“It won’t necessarily have been done in the same vein as our equity release mystery shopping.” Gordon-Walker said he couldn’t confirm how many firms have been used in the exercise or whether they are spread UK-wide.
The FSA’s last mystery shopping exercise, to see if brokers were adequately advising on lifetime mortgages, revealed disappointing results for the industry. It concluded a concerning number of advisers did not gather enough relevant information about their customers.
London-based sole broker Roy New said he expects this latest mystery shopping to reveal good results. He explained: “You would have to be pretty stupid not to hand the IDD to clients at the first meeting because it contains your fee and you will want the client to know that you want paying. We should get a ring of confidence from the FSA on this one.”
