Research conducted by TCF Info, an advice website for brokers, showed that brokers appear to be split on the issue of who should assess income, with just over half of respondents saying that both lenders and intermediaries should be responsible.
Some went further, suggesting that clients needed to feel they had taken responsibility for assessing affordability as well.
One respondent said: “All parties, including the client need to feel comfortable that the loan is affordable. If we pass this liability onto either the lender, intermediary or both then it’s carte blanche for the client who may have financial difficulty later for some other reason, to blame the broker or lender.
“People need to be allowed to take personal responsibility.”
The poll also showed that nearly 85% of respondents agreed with the FSA’s proposal that vulnerable consumers should always be advised and therefore would not be able to purchase their mortgage through a non-interactive process.
However, one respondent said: “Without understanding a customer’s needs, circumstances, budget and preferences (knowing your customer) it is impossible to decide if they are ‘vulnerable'”.
The poll also found that that 68% of respondents were against the prospect of the FSA regulating interest-only mortgages consistently across the board, preferring a more flexible approach depending on consumer type.
Robert Sinclair, director of AMI said that the results were a useful measure of opinions.
He said: “The feelings expressed here mirror what the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries (AMI) has been finding, with strong support for the advice recommendations made by FSA.
“Similarly the need for some consumer responsibility has been expressed both in recent European proposals and from some of the consumer representatives.”
