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Star Letter 12/04/13

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  • 12/04/2013
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Star Letter 12/04/13
Each week Mortgage Solutions picks the best reader contribution from our article comments and letters to the editor.

Each week, we round-up the best comments, emails and letters to the site and pick one reader contribution as our Star Letter. This week’s award goes to:

Lender withdrawals from interest-only may have been hasty – FCA

Having read one of the first pronouncements from Martin Wheatley, CEO of the incoming FCA, I find myself daring to believe that the arrival of our new regulator, could herald a more grown-up approach and a more inclusive dialogue with those it seeks to regulate.

His announcement that lender withdrawals from interest only might have been “too hasty” while not earthshattering in its implications, does serve to illustrate a change of emphasis and perhaps more importantly, a willingness to accommodate a contrary view.

He talked about there being two sides to the risk equation, which I think suggests a refreshing change from the more sledgehammer approach of the FCA’s unlamented predecessor whose modus operandi tended to reflect a “my way or the highway” approach as a means of choking off meaningful dialogue on long term implications of immediate regulatory action.

His view that consumer detriment arising from wrong products reaching the wrong people needed to be balanced by the real detriment to the wider populace of not being able to access the right products is certainly an enlightened one.

There is an indication here that the FCA feels that lenders who have taken the decision to restrict or eliminate the interest only option, have actually been responding to a perceived threat concerning retrospective regulation, without any real evidence that it might come to pass.

Could this be the first sign that we the regulated need to have more courage in our own convictions, rather than try to anticipate a negative outcome and end up with a scenario which suits nobody?

Tony Salentino, Complete FS
Submitted via email

You can read more of this week’s best reader comments in our Star Letter Extra column HERE.

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