The Regulatory Alliance of Mortgage Packagers, whose founder members include County Group, Solent Mortgage Services, Mortgages Direct (Nationwide) and IMB is set to start trading in the New Year and is designed to forge closer links with lenders.
The organisation’s chief aim is to supply its panel of lenders with fully compliant applications. RAMP will agree compliance procedures with lenders and ensure that its members work closely to them.
The organisation has recruited John Rice, former Director of GMAC and The Mortgage Lender, as its Managing Director and is set to shortly appoint a Director of Compliance.
John Rice said: “Our primary aim is to ensure our members supply fully compliant applications to lenders. We will be independently monitoring the compliance of members and will check that everything is in place. When a lender sees an application is from RAMP, it will know that the application is compliant with all the FSA rules.”
“RAMP will be guaranteeing that all applications will have gone through a fully compliant process before delivery to the lenders.”
RAMP is looking to work closely with its mortgage lender panel, which will consist of lenders who support the interests of the packager channel. It will set strategic objectives relating to volume and quality with lenders, develop exclusive mortgage products, and provide a forum for discussion and agreement.
John Rice is meeting with selected lenders during the remainder of December and January and will be in a position to announce RAMP’s lender panel in the New Year. At that stage, when contracts have been signed, he will also be able to publicly announce the names of all founder members.
Mr Rice says that RAMP is looking to build-long term relationships with its lenders.
“The important thing to bear in mind is that we are looking to work with lenders for five years rather than five months. We don’t want to switch lenders on the basis of what is in our short-term interest. RAMP is looking to align the long-term interests of its members with those of its lenders,” he said.
In addition to the 10 board members, RAMP wants to attract other packagers by offering them associate membership. This will give them access to high quality compliance support and a wider product range.
RAMP will not, in itself, be an Appointed Representative or Principal Support Network under the new FSA regulations.
