Expo: FSA 'year of opportunity' approaches

Speaking at the Expo, Dominic Clark, manager of mortgage department, small firms division at the FSA, said that firms should use the new year to show how far they have progressed with the quality of their advice processes.

He said this was an ‘unmissable opportunity’ for firms to show their worth and to prove they were treating their customers fairly.

Clark said: “In the early part of 2008 we will again be reviewing the quality of advice processes used by mortgage intermediary firms. There is a strong hope at the FSA that it will show positive movement in the compliance of mortgage firms.”

He added that the FSA wanted to be in a position to issue ‘adoring statements’ about the mortgage intermediary market when the results of the review are published in June 2008.

Clark revealed that the FSA also planned to issue the results of thematic reviews into the following areas next month: affordability/responsible lending; training and competence; and senior management responsibilities.

He also used the presentation to outline how the FSA was going to increase its contact with regulated firms. Clark added: “We have in place an enhanced strategy to ramp up the supervision of firms to ensure we have greater contact with a larger number of firms. We will be doing this through telephone surveys and visits to firms and following this we will identify 25% of firms who will receive full firm visits.”