FSA sees us as pushers, says CML chief Wyles
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The Council of Mortgage Lenders says it believes the FSA regards mortgage lenders and intermediaries as the “drug dealers at the school gates”, enticing innocent consumers into the mortgage market and then “getting them hooked”.
Speaking at the CML conference in London last week, chairman Matthew Wyles said regulators see consumers as “wanton children” who do not know what is good for them. He said: “I have a sneaking suspicion it is the way that regulators see consumers - as wanton children who have a tendency to want what is not necessarily good for them and for whom nanny knows best.
“Increasingly, I also have the feeling that regulators see lenders and intermediaries as the sweetshop owners - or worse, the drug dealers at the school gates - of the mortgage market, enticing innocent consumers in and then getting them hooked for their own evil, profit-driven purposes.”
Wyles says he sees lenders, with the exception of the “fraudsters and the feckless”, as wanting the same thing as the consumer. He said: “At the risk of stretching this parental analogy, most lenders would prefer not to be cast in a paternalistic role. We do not wish to find ourselves in loco parentis but allowed to treat our customers as adults, respecting their right to make their own decisions.
“That is not to say we want consumers to lack adequate protection from their own financial naivete or lack of experience - of course we don’t. But there is a balance to be struck. The FSA risks creating the kind of moral hazard it wishes to avoid, where consumers feel that they need to take little or no responsibility for their own financial decisions.”
London & Country Mortgages head of communications David Hollingworth says: “I agree with the cautionary tone of his speech and it would be a great shame if we see a more straitjacketed market as we go down this route of nannying too much.”
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