Mark Sismey-Durrant, Heritable

Any mortgage intermediaries concerned about lenders’ readiness should ask them straight questions. If you do not like the answers you get, then look for someone who is ready. Only in this way, can intermediaries be comforted that the lender involved is on track to satisfy the new requirements that regulation will bring. There is a lot for lenders to do, but we have all had plenty of notice. The workload is achievable, with good project planning. At Heritable Bank, we are already in the final stages of reprinting our mortgage documentation, our staff training is nearly finished and our web-based key facts illustration (KFI) system is being tested. In addition, we have begun a communications programme with our regular introducers, to keep them up to date with our progress, so they can be confident of what to expect from us and when.

Michael Wright, Keystone Financial Services

Advisers’ concerns regarding lenders not being ready is very real and a topic of regular broker discussions. There is a strong probability that new systems will either not be fully tested in time or will fail at the first hurdle through computer bugs and glitches. Some lenders may end up closed in the short term while technical problems are resolved, but brokers will still have a market to offer clients from those who are up to speed. To say that a lender who fails initially will not be used in the future, is rather silly. Our duty to clients is to offer the most suitable product to meet their requirements at the time of application and if say the Halifax was not available on Mortgage Day would brokers ignore them in the future – I think not. While it is easy to criticise lenders as a collective, can we be sure every broker will be ready come the day?

Brian Pitt, Beacon Capital Holdings

Will lenders be ready for Mortgage Day? Well, they have got no choice – they have to be. I find it a completely bizarre situation – here we are with around 25 working days to go and we are hearing potential horror stories of lenders who may not have their own processing systems ready, willing and able to process mortgage applications on 1 November.

So what’s going on? We all know the deadlines, we have known them for a long time and lenders’ project teams, legal, planning and compliance departments should have been working in harmony over the past six months to ensure they are appropriately set up to continue trading from November.

There has been a natural gravitation by lenders to seek a technology solution, and IT departments will, no doubt, get the blame if things go wrong, and the KFI is not ready. But it will be the most embarrassing situation possible if this happens – how will the industry look if lenders cannot get a quote right?

I am confident this will not happen though – mortgage regulation is producing scary headlines in advance – in the same way Y2K did. I for one am not expecting to lose any sleep on Halloween night.

Sean Webb, igroup and First National

While we cannot comment on the preparedness of other lenders for Mortgage Day, and after, we are absolutely confident in our own readiness. From the start of the regulatory process we recognised that a partnership approach was the only viable way to move successfully towards and beyond this milestone for our industry. This has been demonstrated by our investment in regulatory support programmes and training packages. By engaging with intermediaries in this way, we feel we have understood their challenges while keeping them informed of our own progress. To do otherwise, leads inevitably to questions and concerns as highlighted by this recent survey. Our priority now is to complete the roll-out of our web-enabled KFI proposition and to prove to our intermediaries that we are working not just to maintain products and systems post Mortgage Day, but also to further improve them. We have every intention of delivering on this.

Dean Mirfin, Key Retirement Solutions

Regarding Mortgage Day, the number one question should be: ‘Are we ready’? Thankfully we are approximately a week ahead of our project dates.

Our concerns, unexpectedly, have not been with our own position, but that of lenders. It may be because we are a little ahead of the game, I’m not sure, but the most striking observation is that lenders are saying very little about what is happening at their end.

IFAs and brokers are asking: ‘How will I access the new KFIs and when will this access be available?’ At this moment in time, only one of the lifetime mortgage providers has offered this information to us. The rest we are having to pursue for the answers. I have no doubt the majority, if not all providers, will be ready, but my plea is that they confirm this and in particular, help IFAs and brokers engineer the most smooth transition that is possible.

Jonathan Cornell, Hamptons International Mortgages

I think that on the whole most lenders will be ready, in the same way that brokers will be ready. I do think for the smaller building societies it might be more difficult because they do not have the same resource level as someone like HBOS. In addition, if they are not going to be ready they will tell us, so it will not really be a matter of them losing anything. Service levels will slip, but only in the short term, until everybody understands the system.

If a lender loses an application, brokers have short memories. My nightmare lender of six months ago may turn out to be my favourite lender now, it depends on rates and services at the time. I do not think that if a lender loses a particular case that a broker would boycott them for life. But a lender obviously would have to work hard to restore faith.