Gummer’s appointment prompts HBOS to renew AMI membership

Back in February Gooding announced he intended to launch a network, sparking industry accusations that he would be unable to remain an impartial chairman of AMI.

At the time the HBOS group of lenders – BM Solutions, Intelligent Finance (IF), The Mortgage Business (TMB), Bank of Scotland and Halifax – said they would not become AMI members until the Gooding situation was resolved.

Following Gummer’s appointment as the new chairman, the lenders said they have paid their fees to the trade body to become members. Gooding announced in June that he was to step down as AMI chairman.

Jennifer Blackwood, senior communications officer at Intelligent Finance, said: “I can confirm that everything has been sorted out and that all lenders within the whole HBOS group are now full members of AMI.”

Chris Cummings, director of AMI, said: “When we discussed who our new chairman should be we set out to find someone who would be impartial. We would have been sending out the wrong signals to directly authorised brokers if the chairman was part of a network, and vice versa.”

AMI has also appointed Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at Charcol, and Stephen Smith, director of housing and marketing at Legal & General Partnership, as deputy chairmen of the board.