Darren Pescod, managing director of The Mortgage Broker Ltd, said his company had seen an increasing number of mystery shopping cases, but had not received any feedback from the FSA. While he acknowledged mystery shopping could be coming from competitors, he felt if the FSA was involved it should recognise those firms getting it right.
He said: “Being an internet-based business, most of our communication is done by telephone rather than face-to-face. We are conscious of the obvious disadvantage of this scenario and have therefore fine-tuned our internal processes to ensure clients are aware of the consequences of false declarations at the earliest possible time, ensuring we are compliant and at the same time enabling us to offer clients best advice.”
Pescod cited examples of mystery shoppers either completing and submitting fictitious enquiry forms or calling the company directly. “One may assume that either competitors or perhaps the FSA are keen to obtain information on our enquiry process. If it is the FSA, I hope they would acknowledge good business practice as well as reprimand the companies and advisers who are not doing the job the way it should be done.”
Samantha Bennett, spokesperson for the FSA, said: “There are two reasons the FSA does mystery shopping. One is for our thematic work, where we may publish findings or communicate with firms in various ways. The second is for supervision, where we would go back to the firm to discuss how we can help. We cannot comment on individual firms.”
