FSA says endowment mortgages were not mis-sold
The Financial Services Authority dismissed recent newspaper reports in which the press claimed mortgage borrowers were mis-sold endowment policies by lenders.

Add that much of the criticism appears to be of the Legal & General and this makes me think that the stories may have come from a single source. Legal & General has been criticised by former sales staff, who claim that the company's management encouraged them to sell inappropriate policies. I suspect that national newspaper journalists are turning to these staff in the hope of generating stories during the quiet summer months.

You can see the BBC's report of the FSA's response here:
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/your_money/newsid_415000/415423.stm

Response to the repossessed and near-repossessed houses list proposal.
Responses so far have been enthusiastically in favour of the idea. For anyone new to this newsletter, this proposal was for a system that allows people who face repossession or whom have been repossessed to offer their houses for sale over the web in the hope of:

1. offering it to the wider public
2. getting a higher price for it than a lender would
3. producing a record of offers that could be used to beat off lender claims that the house was hard to sell.

I also set out the disadvantages but I won't waste space by repeating them here. However, if you don't think I should set up such a list please let me know.

Specialist lender contact service
I've changed the message that this service delivers to lenders in a desperate bid to encourage them to try respond to email enquiries for mortgage information. This service saves you having to run up a big phone bill browsing the web-sites put up by specialist mortgage lenders or brokers ("specialist" meaning providers of mortgages for the previously repossessed, credit-impaired or self-employed). Instead, if you put your email address into a box on the page of links to these lenders the system will send the lenders an email which appears to be from you and which asks them for details of their mortgages. In order to help the lenders/brokers focus down on your specific needs, I've changed the wording of the email to request an email of the questions you need to answer in order for them to give you a quote.

I've done this because many of the lenders/brokers were quite clearly flummoxed by the prospect of dealing with potential customers by email. Some appear not to have replied, others told readers to phone, others offered to phone readers and one referred readers to their web-site. That was partly my fault, as the wording of the email was a bit vague. But I'm also surprised that these people didn't seem able to grab the bull by the horns and email to readers the questions they needed answers to in order to give them a quote.

Thanks to the readers who forwarded me copies of the responses they had received. It was invaluable.

Changes to the site
I've added a few estate agents' web-sites to the page of links in the Who Helps? section.

[ends]

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