The FSA has held several enforcement meetings where it revealed its intention to sift out all intermediaries who have failed to apply for direct or AR status and are found to be trading after ‘Mortgage Day’.
It is believed the 30-strong enforcement team will be based throughout the country and will receive information about unregulated brokers from a number of sources including lenders, building societies, whistleblowers and the MCCB.
Robin Gordon-Walker, spokesman for the FSA, said: “You could say this is a ‘special team’ designed to look very closely at the perimeters. Lots of authorised firms are very anxious that unregulated firms will take business away from them.”
Dale Knight, managing director at Professional Mortgage Network, said: “One of our sources informed us the FSA is extremely concerned that unregulated brokers will keep trading after ‘Mortgage Day’ and then just plead ignorance if found out, so it has set up a team to target these intermediaries.”
Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at Charcol, said: “This seems like a sensible approach by the FSA. There will be brokers out there who will think they can get away with trading unregulated for a month or so, or just use their friend’s FSA number.”
Rob Clifford, managing director of mortgageforce, commented: “This is a stark warning that the regulator will not tolerate unregulated activities. There are still some brokers that just don’t understand the severity of the changes that will occur when regulation takes effect.”
And Sally Laker, managing director of Mortgage Intelligence said the FSA meant business: “Some intermediaries will have believed there would be no repercussions but this shows that there will be.”
