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Star Letter 04/04/14

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  • 04/04/2014
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Star Letter 04/04/14
Each week Mortgage Solutions picks the best reader contributions from our article comments and letters to the editor.

Each week, we also 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:

Going it alone: meet the mortgage brokers turning DA

I have been with various networks since I went self-employed in 2006, after being scared off dealing direct with the regulator. I have seen two networks go under, causing me loss of earnings etc and I am currently with an IFA network for security, although I think us mortgage and GI brokers are only there to make up the numbers.

My current network are constantly trying to treat us like IFAs with a ‘one size fits all’ approach, which means I am overburdened with compliance and forever having to read 20 page compliance memos of which one paragraph is relevant to me. I was paying quite a high fixed monthly fee compared to the business I was writing when times were very lean on the business front.

Now that business is picking up, the network have decided that as well as wanting a monthly fee, they are going to take 12% of my turnover, so this is the straw that has broken the camel’s back and I too am making the switch from AR to DA.

The only thing that had prevented me from making the switch previously was the initial set up costs, especially after losing money due to the two network failures mentioned above and the cashflow problems this caused at a time when business wasn’t that plentiful anyway.

A few years back I had a visit from the then FSA as part of a wider visit to the network I was with at the time and they went through everything as if I was DA. This was not a problem for me though as I am an ethical experienced broker who does the job right and apart from a couple of minor suggestions, I flew through the visit. So much for the big bad wolf that the scaremongers would have you believe the regulator are.

MMR should not be a barrier to going DA as I think the changes taking place have been grossly overstated. If you are doing a thorough job now then you are probably doing most of what is changing anyway and those of us who have been around long enough to see the change from LAUTRO to PIA to FSA to FCA, will know that the following day the earth is still spinning and you just get on with the job!

Disgruntled network member

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

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