Sally Laker, Managing Director, Mortgage Intelligence commented, “The FSA found a catalogue of errors and problems with the advice given by brokers to consumers with regard to equity release products. Worryingly, the regulator found that 70% of advisers had not gathered enough information about their clients before offering advice and in a series of mystery shopper tests, 60% of potential customers said advisers had not explained the downside of equity release. We hope that our fact find will help to address this problem especially for smaller mortgage firms who may find it difficult to put together specialist material such as this”.
The factfind has been fully researched and checked against the FSA’s strict requirements by Mortgage Intelligence’s compliance team to ensure that it covers all the key points raised by the investigation.
The document has been provided free of charge to Spirit and Vantage members but is now available for a one-off fee of £100 + VAT per adviser to Elan members and £200 + VAT to non-members. An Application form is available from Mortgage Intelligence’s website. On receipt of the application and fee it will e-mail a pdf of the factfind.
Sally Laker concluded, “Equity release was already high on the FSA's agenda and given the results of this investigation that will not change so more action can be expected.”
