Commentators believe that the regulator will not actively seek to take any disciplinary action against lenders who fall out of line with regulation until at least Christmas or the New Year.
Bill Warren, director of The Complete Network, said: “I think lenders will be left alone. The FSA will find there is too much work involved if it starts to look at individual cases at this point. It will let the dust settle up until Christmas.”
David Hollingworth, mortgage specialist at London & Country, commented: “I certainly don’t think the FSA will be making visits tomorrow. It will wait until things have settled before it makes a true assessment of how regulation is being handled by lenders.”
And Kevin Morgan, managing director of Consilium Financial Planning, said: “It would be a pragmatic approach for the FSA to wait. It can be argued that lenders will need a honeymoon period to overcome any teething problems.
“But there is also the cynical view that it is less cost and takes less resources to pick on the smaller guys first.”
Robin Gordon-Walker, spokesman for the FSA, said: “There are no two ways about it. Lenders have to be compliant. But it takes time to collect the information and evaluate the strength of the case.
“In principle, if something happened really early on we would deal with it.”
