Speaking at the Mortgage Business Expo in London today, he said: “The reality is that some banks are only doing enough mortgage business in branch to justify one adviser between two or three branches. I think there is a huge opportunity for brokers here.”
This follows today’s report on bank branch advisers out from Which? after an undercover sting found only five out of 37 bank advisers gave ‘good’ advice. The rest failed in areas including obtaining a fact find, assessing attitude to risk and explaining customer rights under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).
Shearman added that from the last piece if RDR research he came across, around 50% of advisers siad they were unlikely to get the diploma or level of qualification they would need in 14 months time.
Shearman said that this could be the spur for mortgage brokers to branch out into new areas of financial services.
“Some of those advisers will say, actually I don’t want to do investments and pensions anymore, and will many will consider making a transition to the mortgage and protection markets.
“There are a lot of advisers that are going to be leaving the full financial planning space so there are opportunities for mortgage brokers who want to try out new areas too,” he added.
Gemma Harle, managing director of Tenet Lime outlined the challenges facing the network proposition. She told delegates charging structures are under major pressure from the regulatory landscape.
Shearman added that “translating the Mortgage Market Review into a language brokers can understand,” will be another key challenge.
“We believe that the MMR paper is around 700-pages long and breaking that down is going to be a difficult task for brokers. We need to ensure that brokers fully understand what the regulator is saying so that they can do good business.”
