GMAC-RFC, Kensington and now Redstone Mortgages have all received fines from the FSA for failing to treat customers fairly and failing to ensure arrears handling staff understood treating customers fairly requirements.
Industry sources suggest that the FSA may now be in talks with other lenders that used HML to service their clients during a similar time frame.
A spokesman for HML, which is owned by Skipton, said it would be inappropriate for the servicer to comment on individual clients.
Currently, mortgage market regulation does not hold third party servicers responsible for treating customers fairly in any agreement with a lender, though the FSA is reviewing this regulation and expects to publish its findings later this year.
A spokeswoman for the FSA says that as regards customers in arrears and TCF: “We say on page 56 of CP 10/16 Mortgage Market Review: Responsible Lending ‘In some fee justifications we reviewed, the administration of mortgage arrears had been outsourced to a TPA.
“AS we indicated in DP/3, we are undertaking a review of our approach to TPA's. This review is not yet complete. For this reason, we are not commenting in this CP on the recovery of TPA costs as parts of our arrears charges or TPA arrears charging practices more generally.
“This will form part of our wider conclusions and proposals on TPA's, which will be published at a later date.’”
GMAC-RFC was fined £2.8 million by the FSA in October last year and ordered to pay £7.7 million in redress to borrowers.
Kensington received a £1.2 million fine in April this year and was ordered to pay £1 million in redress and Redstone was fined £630,000 by the FSA last week and ordered to pay up to £500,000 in redress.
Last week the FSA fined Redstone Mortgages, a firm that purchased loans from non-bank lenders rather than originating the loans itself, for applying unfair or excessive charges; failing to ensure arrears handling staff understood treating customers fairly requirements; focussing on reducing arrears to less than two months regardless of individual circumstances; having policies which led to unnecessary use of litigation and sending out excessive and confusing correspondence between 2007 and 2009.
