Speaking to brokers at the Mortgage Buisness Expo, the lender’s chief credit officer, Iain Laing, said the FSA seemed to be buying time to manoeuvre on the exact MMR rules it would publish after the consultation period.
However, he also said: “this consultation is not a debate, whatever Lord Turner has said. The FSA are the only ones who get a vote on what regulation gets published. Our job is to persuade and influence and we are trying to inform the regulator about the impacts of what they are proposing.”
Laing said homeownership was a good thing that encouraged social and political stability, but that as the current proposals stand we will reduce consumer access to mortgages and therefore reduce homeownership.
He said: “Santander’s view is that we should use existing best practice in the market as guidelines for regulation and not go beyond that. We should avoid prescriptive language and over-regulation of affordability. I cannot see how the MMR as it stands will benefit consumers in terms of a flexible mortgage market.”
