Pre-funding reviews on new lenders or renewals of funding lines have evolved significantly since the global financial crisis (‘GFC’).  The reviews were superficial and extremely light touch at that point in time.Back in the first half of the 2000s, funders believed that any failings in the processes of those they funded would be mitigated by […]

Variety is the spice of life – well that is certainly true in our world. It is often wrongly assumed that we solely provide due diligence reviews on traditional asset sales and purchases of bank/building society secured and unsecured loans, but nothing could be further from reality. Prudent businesses, including ourselves, regularly update their product […]

In a recent press release we announced that we had become fully registered on the FSQS supplier qualification system, managed by Hellios. FSQS is a community of leading financial institutions including banks, building societies, insurance companies and investment services, who collaborate with the primary objective of improving standards in the supplier industry. We are delighted […]

At the time of writing, despite the rumours of an extension being granted, there are around 5 weeks before the Stamp Duty holiday expires on 31 March. UK property transactions are often subject to delays and bottlenecks, but the risk of delay has never been so potentially expensive for consumers as a £400k purchase will […]

When a senior officer from the National Crime Agency warns MPs about the substantial amount of fraud within the emergency loan schemes you know there is a problem.  With £43bn of government backed loans being provided to 1.4 million firms in a very short space of time, we should not be surprised.  At the same […]

Every January the FCA announces the fines total for the previous year.  The 2020 totals were not quite as high as the 2019 figure, but it has still issued fines of more than £500m in those two years – and that takes into account early settlement discounts.   Included in the 2020 figure was a […]

The FCA approach to supervision is not new having been put in place 18 months ago, but it has now further tightened the regulatory ratchet for lenders and others with Dear CEO/Board of Directors letters to the different types of businesses it has identified. The FCA groups firms into portfolios (dare we suggest individual bubbles?) […]

Regulatory guidance lands on lenders’ desks in a variety of formats; guidance notes, consultation documents, policy updates, notifications of regulatory fines, Dear CEO letters and, on occasions (in respect of key concerns) letters addressed to the whole Board of Directors.  The latter should currently be a focus of Lifetime Mortgage Providers’ Boards as they received […]