Speaking at the AMI dinner, Robert Sinclair (pictured) said: “All the conversations I have had with the regulator are, genuinely, for this sector that this isn’t about you.”
Sinclair said that the mortgage market was different to other sectors in financial services as it used a sourcing system, criteria search to run lots of comparisons and then give the best recommendations, whereas in other areas product comparison was not as exhaustive.
“We should stand up and be proud that actually we can say we do good things well, but that is not to say there aren’t things we can be better at.”
He said that there was “debate to be had” around standard variable rates, revert rates, early repayment charges and exit charges but these were “at the edges not at the core of the issue”.
Sinclair also said that broker fees could also come under scrutiny and it would be important to have “very clear policies” on fee structure.
Customers need ‘help and understanding’ around product withdrawals
Regarding short notice product withdrawals and lender repricing, Sinclair said that the “challenge here is at the sharp end of this, there are customers who need help and understanding”.
He urged lenders to “give us [brokers] as much information as you can” so brokers can help educate and inform their clients.
Sinclair also called for brokers to “take that information and use it sensibly and responsibly to make sure that the outcomes we have work for the consumer, and we don’t enter into…warfare that does nothing for either side but will only cause damage to the customer”.
He said that “technology should be making a difference” in rapid withdrawals.
“We are a market that is dominated by intermediaries now, and I don’t see that changing in any way in the future, but working together to get all this to work smoothly is essential.”
Lack of progress on EPC legislation ‘grave dereliction of duty’ from government
Sinclair said that the green agenda was a “concern”, noting that the government had tried to accelerate it with upcoming EPC legislation but had “since abdicated their responsibility in terms of doing anything tangible around this”.
“That’s a grave dereliction of duty, in my view. I do worry about the planet because I do believe that global warming is happening, and I do believe that we face a crisis of our own making. Therefore, we can either wait to be told or we can choose to begin to act,” he said.
Sinclair welcomed innovations from lenders on products, citing Nationwide’s zero green per cent additional borrowing deal as an example.
“The challenge…is to think about doing that in a way that works for the consumer not necessarily for your bottom line,” he noted.
“To every broker in the room, I think it is going to be necessary that you will be the catalyst for all of this, because consumers when they do get interested in this…will see you as a place where they want to come to talk about how to finance changes.”
He said that brokers would have to learn about retrofit, in the same way that they have an awareness of limited company and special purpose vehicles in buy-to-let, so they could point clients in the “right direction”.
Mortgage sector needs to ‘grow information’ about career opportunities
Sinclair said that it was important for the industry to “grow information” about the sector as a career and to market itself better.
“We are not good at trying to tell people in schools or universities what a good industry this is to work in, and we need to find a way of transforming that,” he noted.
He also called for better financial education in schools, so people were more prepared and understood things like tax, mortgages, credit cards, pensions and protection.
