AMI and AFB head of policy Alex Revell said the advice proposals forced lenders to make a choice about increasing the skills of their workforce: “They either have to skill up the staff they have, make sure they are compliant with MMR standards – which may lead to having higher costs.

“Or they look at the broker community, which already has everything they need, and actually increase the distribution pushed through intermediaries.

“There is a great opportunity for brokers to build new relationships.”

However, he acknowledged that questions surrounding the MMR remained, such as the rules around lending for retirement.

“If a client is a long way from retirement but the mortgage will take them into their retirement, they can use the fact they have a pension as a way of paying in retirement,” he explained. “But as they get closer to retirement the question is whether they have sufficient pension income.

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“At what point do you have to change acknowledging that the client has a pension to actually working out what that pension is going to be?”