The questionnaire found that:
Only 2% of brokers will stop selling mortgages completely because they write too little business anyway or would find it too onerous.
Of those staying in the market, 55% of brokers would plan to become directly authorised, whilst 45% would aim to become appointed representatives.
Those that plan to become directly authorised:
Of those who choose to become authorised and who knew what kind of panel they wanted, almost 60% will operate a whole of market panel of lenders, with just 10% choosing a multi-tie panel.
30% are still undecided as to what kind of panel they would like to operate, and of these, just over a third (35%) will make their decision by 31 December 2003 and 32% will not make a decision until just before October 2004.
63% of those brokers who choose to become authorised principals will aim to sign up to 25 ARs; 27% would sign between 26 and 100 ARs and only 11% would aim to take on any more than 100.
79% brokers who choose to be authorised will control its compliance issues by central desk or a sourcing system. Only 13% would provide external field visits.
Those that plan to become appointed representatives:
29% of those brokers who wish to become appointed have decided to get access to lenders via packagers, 26% via a network and 19% via a life company.
Those that would like to be appointed representatives were asked what would influence their decision on choice of principal. Fees, compliance, products and existing tie relationships all came out as equally important.
Bill Dudgeon, Managing Director of The Mortgage Business, commented on the questionnaire: "Conducting this research has thrown up some interesting results - compliance would appear to be an issue for brokers probably because it can be time consuming and a lengthy process. However, having said that, it is interesting that there is an almost 50/50 split between becoming authorised and appointed."
