On 7 July Sadia Nasir was fined £129,000 and banned after finding she had been involved in numerous fraudulent mortgage applications. This is the first time the FSA has both banned and fined a mortgage broker for mortgage fraud. She was director of a firm based in Ilford called London Mortgage and Financial Services Limited. The firm traded as House of Finance.
Commenting on her case, Margaret Cole, director of enforcement at the FSA, said: "Ms Nasir's actions were particularly serious and blatant, and she poses an immediate risk to lenders.”
On 9 July the FSA banned and fined North East-based mortgage broker Robin Knox after finding he had exposed about 500 of his firm’s customers to the risk of receiving unsuitable advice.
Knox, managing director of Mortgage and Property Services Limited (MPSL), was banned for lacking competence and capability and for failing to ensure his firm had proper systems and controls in place for the nature of the business it conducted.
The FSA also fined Knox £17,500 for failing to organise the firm’s affairs effectively and responsibly and failing to ensure the firm met required standards in recommending mortgage contracts.
On 15 July the FSA fined a Kilmarnock mortgage firm £11,900 for failing to adequately supervise an adviser, resulting in applications containing false and misleading information being submitted to lenders.
The adviser, Ian Sanderson, has been banned from the industry for deliberately entering false information on mortgage applications, and the firm, Mortgage Master (Glasgow) Limited, must review all of Sanderson's mortgage files and inform all lenders and clients of cases where false information has been included in mortgage applications.
The firm agreed to settle at an early stage of the enforcement proceedings and thereby qualified for a 30% reduction in penalty pursuant to the FSA's executive settlement procedures. Were it not for this reduction the FSA would have imposed a financial penalty of £17,000 on the firm.
And on 16 July 2008 the FSA banned two Wakefield mortgage brokers for failing to meet the standards expected of approved persons in terms of competence and capability. They failed to ensure adequate measures were in place to prevent their partnership from being used to submit potentially false mortgage applications and exposed about 250 customers to the risk of receiving unsuitable advice.
Derick Whewall and Alan Hewitt, partners of The Mortgage Exchange, did not ensure that the partnership gave suitable advice to customers. It did not obtain and record sufficient information to establish customers’ needs and objectives and its assessment and recording of affordability of recommended mortgage contracts was inadequate.
They failed to ensure the partnership was organised so that it could identify and act upon obvious anomalies in false mortgage applications and help to prevent it being used by third parties to make mortgage applications on a fraudulent basis.
The Mortgage Exchange has appointed a skilled person to review clients’ files and establish whether there has been any consumer detriment.
Don’t forget the TCF December deadline.
