Yes, it’s Strictly Come Dancing.
In completely unrelated news, the political party conference season has just drawn to a close for 2011 and parliament can now get back to the business of governing the country.
This year, the BSA was out in force at all three of the political conferences, hosting fringe events on the importance of diversity in financial services.
We also did a joint event with the Money Advice Trust looking at how lenders, advice agencies and government can work together to help struggling borrowers.
At the latter session, the BSA launched its report A Joined-up Approach to Helping Mortgage Borrowers to, for the most part, enthusiastic support.
The report makes recommendations on how forbearance, government schemes, flexible tenure and insurance should work together to create a framework of solutions to help those struggling to meet their mortgage payments.
This is something that Conservative MP Jake Berry (parliamentary private secretary to Minister for Housing and Local Government Grant Shapps) is keen on.
This is particularly because he was previously a property lawyer, and candid enough to admit that he had probably helped to pump up the property bubble.
On the subject of insurance, we feel it is time for the government to actively start encouraging its take-up, but we do not go as far as to recommend it becoming compulsory.
On flexible tenure, we think that there is further work to be done in the form of a feasibility study on how consumers could sell and buy shares in their property.
We also think that there should be greater security in the private rented sector which would mean that there are other options than owner occupation for those looking for a long-term home.
In the area of forbearance, we believe that there should be greater alignment and information sharing between first charge, second charge and unsecured lenders – a more holistic approach – so that borrowers have a simpler forbearance landscape to navigate.
There is little value in reaching agreements with a first charge lender only to lose your home because of a second charge debt.
Finally, we think that it is right that the government focus in Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI), but that it should be extended to make it more widely available.
Those outside the current limits who were paid SMI would have a charge secured against their property which would mean that the funds would be recoverable by the government when the borrower’s situation improved or the home was sold.
Elsewhere at the conferences, the zeitgeist seemed to have changed from borrowing to saving
This was clear from fringe events such as Getting the UK Saving Again: Are Radical Solutions Needed?; Savings in an age of austerity; Big picture thinking: towards sustainable savings; Nudging the nation: how can government and business work together to encourage long term savings behaviour?; and Creating a savings culture: turning rhetoric into reality.
The emphasis on helping people save, rather than encouraging them to take out extra borrowing, reflects a wider change which seems to be happening in society, as we see a move away from materialism to acquiring life experiences.
Paul Broadhead is head of mortgage policy at the BSA
