A number of sources have told of their unease at the sheer level of commitments the regulator currently has and raised questions over the impact this could have on its work with brokers.
Richard Fox, chief executive of the Society of Mortgage Professionals, believed: “The FSA is issuing all these papers and initiatives but it has said very little on mortgages recently. It hasn’t issued a mortgage bulletin for a while now and this is a key part of working with brokers.
"With a lot of the small firms staff moving to the Northern Rock review and the regulator’s focus on that issue, has the FSA got enough staff to deal with the everyday stuff?”
One source told Mortgage Introducer that the FSA was turning down speaking invitations, which was a major issue as this was the most interactive forum for intermediaries to meet with the regulator and get to grips with regulation.
With the FSA planning 3,000 visits to smaller firms this year, another source argued there was a danger that these could be worthless for intermediaries if the FSA was just ‘chasing numbers’ and not spending real time with brokers and helping them to improve their businesses.
Richard Farr, director of the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries, believed the FSA must be careful to not overwhelm brokers in one go.
“Regulatory overload is obviously a concern as the agenda is quite full. One of the issues we are raising with the FSA in its consultation on extending the common platform is to give it a longer bedding-in period so that brokers can finish focusing on ‘Treating Customers Fairly’ before they have to deal with another issue.”
Robin Gordon-Walker, spokesperson for the FSA, said: “We have always got many things on and we have a huge scope when it comes to financial services.
"Part of our role is to speak to the industry and while we try and do that as often as possible, we can’t accept every invite we get. We are extremely busy but our outreach programme for brokers is very important to us.”
