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.
“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?”
