{"id":261,"date":"2008-11-28T11:52:26","date_gmt":"2008-11-28T11:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-finance-zone.co.uk\/?p=261"},"modified":"2008-11-28T11:52:26","modified_gmt":"2008-11-28T11:52:26","slug":"lenders-given-fairness-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/2008\/11\/28\/lenders-given-fairness-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"Lenders given ‘fairness’ deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City watchdog has threatened lenders with fines if they fail to give fair treatment to customers when dealing with arrears on home loans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mortgage providers have been given a deadline of 31 January to prove that customers facing arrears or repossession are treated fairly.<\/p>\n

Previous criticism of lenders’ policies by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) prompted an angry response.<\/p>\n

The move comes shortly before a drop in some lenders’ variable mortgage rates. <\/p>\n

‘Challenging environment’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The FSA has written to all chief executives of mortgage lenders and administrators telling them to review their arrears policies.<\/p>\n

“Conditions in the mortgage market are difficult and it seems likely that these conditions will persist for sometime,” said Jon Pain, FSA retail managing director.<\/p>\n

“In such a challenging operating environment it is particularly important for senior management to ensure the fair treatment of customers.”<\/p>\n

Previous criticism of “weaknesses” in arrears and repossession policies led to a strident response from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) which was angry that all lenders were grouped together for criticism.<\/p>\n

The CML said most lenders had well-structured policies.<\/p>\n

Adrian Coles, director general of the Building Societies Association (BSA), welcomed the latest move.<\/p>\n

“With arrears forecast to increase over 2009, it is essential that all lenders ensure that their arrears and repossession policies treat customers fairly,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Building societies want their borrowers to remain in their homes if they have repayment difficulties, and genuinely view repossession as a last resort.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The City watchdog has threatened lenders with fines if they fail to give fair treatment to customers when dealing with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-companies","category-finance","category-house-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}