The Financial Services Authority of UK has banned two Wakefield mortgage brokers for failing to meet the standards expected of approved persons in terms of competence and capability.
The brokers failed to ensure that adequate measures were in place to prevent their partnership from being used to submit potentially false mortgage applications and exposed about 250 customers to the risk of receiving unsuitable advice.
Derick Whewall and Alan Hewitt, partners of The Mortgage Exchange, did not ensure that the partnership gave suitable advice to customers. It did not obtain and record sufficient information to establish customers’ needs and objectives and its assessment of affordability of recommended mortgage contracts was inadequate.
They failed to ensure the partnership was organized so that it could identify and act upon obvious anomalies in false mortgage applications and help to prevent it being used by third parties to make mortgage applications on a fraudulent basis.
Jonathan Phelan, director of enforcement at the Financial Services Authority (FSA), said: We are continuing to find instances where mortgage brokers are unwilling or unable to maintain the standards we require and where we come across this we will take action including banning them.