YOUR INDUSTRY
Your Industry
Our Influence
We have tirelessly requested change and have been successful in the following areas:
FSA
- Significant involvement in establishing final mortgage, and general insurance, rules.
- Successfully negotiating a lower level of regulatory fees for members in the FSA’s first year of supervision than applied to other intermediary firms.
- Persuading FSA to set up simplified application process to allow firms a swifter direct authorisation approach than usual.
- Won concession from FSA that firms involved in multiple lines of business (e.g. mortgages and general insurance) should get a 50% reduction in regulatory costs on second business line.
- A 50% reduction in FSA fees for firms who carry out general insurance mediation in addition to mortgage business.
- Gained FSA support for an instalment scheme for FSA fees – with an exclusive discount for AMI members. Approximately 4,000 firms now use this system, and recently AMI secured improved payment terms for all members using the scheme.
- Lobbied successfully for a concession on holding client money. The FSA will not apply the full rigour of its client money rules where firms hold procuration fee monies they rebate to clients.
- Won concession for mortgage intermediary firms so they do not need to be audited – the FSA recently outlined proposals to remove statutory audit requirements for small firms and appointed representatives.
- Established principle of ‘reliance on others’, so that a mortgage intermediary firm could rely on information proved by a third party business.
- Won concession on self-cert that a mortgage intermediary firm can use their own judgement when assessing a case and do not need to demand client bank statements, etc.
FOS/FSCS
- Lobbied FOS to ensure lowest possible level of firm fee.
- Lobbied FOS to bring about ‘two free cases’ for mortgage intermediaries.
- Lobbied for review of funding of FOS, to challenge the current system which levies a fee even where a firm is found to have done nothing wrong. A consultation paper on the way FOS is funded is due this month.
- Lobbied for a full-scale funding review of FSCS – the discussion paper on this was published last month.
- Lobbied FSCS to create new lower charges for mortgage intermediary firms.