Ombudsman sees few mortgage broker complaints
While mortgage brokers are debating the need for formal regulation of their industry, banking ombudsman Liz Brown’s experience suggests it may not be necessary.
Thursday, August 23rd 2001, 3:26PM
by Jenny Ruth
"We do get the occasional complaint … if anything, there’s been slightly fewer recently," Brown says.
Currently, mortgage brokers aren't covered by any form of regulatory control and anyone can call themselves a broker. They are estimated to account for about 25% of mortgages being written today. Only about half the brokers operating in the market belong to the Mortgage Brokers Association.
Brown says her office is aware that more and more people are arranging their mortgages through brokers, even though their complaints usually have nothing to do with the involvement of a mortgage broker.
Brown says she suspects a lot of the less successful brokers who were the cause of many complaints have now dropped out of the industry.
Of the complaints she does receive, it’s often difficult to tell who is responsible for the problem, the mortgage broker or the bank providing the mortgage, Brown says.
But when the problem is clearly the mortgage
broker’s responsibility, the banking ombudsman has no jurisdiction
to do anything about it.
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