Mortgage lenders accept statutory regulation
The BBC is carrying a report that the Council of Mortgage Lenders says mortgage regulation should be statutory and not voluntary. The CML was lobbying for voluntary regulation until a just a few weeks ago.

The BBC report claims lenders changed their mind because their claim that they could regulate themselves looked "increasingly untenable" as opposition grew.

This is great news. That mortgage lending in Britain was allowed to continue unchecked and un-monitored for as long as it has been defies belief.

I can't help wondering if part of the reason the CML has changed its mind is that it expects several weeks of bad publicity for the mortgage industry... and does not want to be seen to be on the wrong side of the debate. See our second story if you want to understand what we mean and bear in mind that the people involved in that story intend to publicise how they have been treated.

Certainly there has been no particular shift in mortgage lenders' view that customer rights shouldn't amount to much. We've learned that in a meeting just weeks ago, the CML still refused to consider dropping its support for penalty fees on customers who miss a payment. That suggests that this leopard has not changed its spots.

And there is much fighting ahead. The battle for honesty in the mortgage industry will shift to deciding what rules lenders should have to work by. It will shift to deciding what is fair and what is not fair for customers. This second battle will be about CAT - the standards that make a financial product fair in the eyes of the Government.

Let's hope we can make mortgage selling fair in the eyes of the public too. The BBC coverage is at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/your_money/newsid_459000/459596.stm

National Association of Mortgage Victims seeks CMC/OCWEN victims
The National Association of Mortgage Victims is looking for people who were sold mortgages by OCWEN and CMC. It believes they may be entitled to compensation of up to 15 per cent of the claims for arrears either company has made against them.

This follows a county court case in Haverford West, in which the judgement implied that CMC's agreements to pay mortgage brokers four times normal commissions if they encouraged customers to go with a CMC mortgage were unlawful.

Borrowers can recover these commissions, says the NAMV, and wants all customers of CMC/OCWEN to contact it because it believes almost all CMC mortgages were sold this way.

There's a lot more to the case. A key point is that claims may not be restricted to customers who were sold mortgages by CMC's three main brokers - Capital Credit, Charles Ashworth and Latham Finance (also known as Direct Credit). Customers sold mortgages by another 47 brokers may also be able to claim.

NAMV needs cash to finance its work so it's asking people who might benefit from this to call it for more information on a premium rate line. It's number is 0906 730 7444.

Changes to the Home Repossession Page:
New information on legal rights for people whose financial circumstances are affected by their partner's mortgage problems.
http://www.home-repo.org/reposses/legals2.htm

The site now includes a library of the last two months' of newsletters.
http://www.home-repo.org/library.htm

If anybody has collected any of the newsletters I wrote in the past, I would appreciate a copy of them to add to the library. It would help me achieve one of my aims here, which is to ensure that press reports about mortgage issues don't just become fish and chip wrapping. If you have them, email them to repossession @ bigfoot.com.

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