With employees being told that they should not take any days off before the start of regulation, there are worries that these workers will inevitably take the time off due to them after 31 October, leaving mortgage companies severely short-staffed.
Stuart Wilson, mortgage development director at Inter-Alliance Group, said: “I was speaking to one lender that is not permitting its staff to take any days off before ‘Mortgage Day’ and this seems to be occurring across the board. But these firms are treading on thin ice.”
“As an employer you can’t actually take peoples’ days off them so these employees will have to use these days up before the end of the year. It would be a PR nightmare trying to explain why your staff are off just when regulation has taken effect,” Wilson warned.
Frank Thurlby, head of compliance at Genesis Home Loans, admits that the firm has restricted the holidays its staff can take during the run-up to regulation. “We were expecting quite a large influx of AR applications in the last two months so we have restricted staff holidays to cope with this,” he said.
But Thurlby denies that this practice will result in staff shortages after ‘Mortgage Day’. He said: “Out staff tend not to take holidays during the September/October period anyway as their kids are at school.”
However, Dai Davies, director of communications at UNIFI, the union that represents staff in banks, building societies and finance houses, says staff have an entitlement to take time off. “We do not look favourably on this,” he said. “We’ve seen this type of practice occurring within financial companies before, when everyone was concerned about the millenium bug. Financial institutions should not be restricting everyone’s holiday at the same time.”
