Mortgages  

Mortgage prisoners 'made to suffer for longer'

“We need an independent review into what went wrong at the FCA and the Fos.

“It is clear that both organisations missed opportunities to uncover and investigate these unfair SVR increases and the Fos should immediately review all of the previous cases involving MAS5 where it had wrongly rejected the customers’ complaints.”

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Mortgage Prisoners Group

This call for review was echoed by the UK Mortgage Prisoners Group, which has called on the FCA to now address the unfairness further by considering earlier rate rises and ordering MAS5 to pay full redress to all affected customers.

UK Mortgage Prisoners Group lead campaigner, Rachel Neale, said: "We believe Fos and the FCA know the damage and detriment caused to Borrowers held on high SVRs in closed books and SPVs. 

“They must act now to prevent further harm to our members who have been profiteered from since the Financial Crash in 2008.”

Neale added that the group want to see regulatory reform so that no residential mortgage customer can be sold to a non lending entity which does not offer products all borrowers have an expectation to be able to access during the lifetime of their mortgage

The group is also calling for a regulatory amendment to residential mortgage terms and conditions to prevent borrowers from being trapped on reversionary SVRs at the end of any fixed rate period.

In response, a spokesperson for the FCA said: “Parliament has set up the Financial Ombudsman Service to be operationally independent, so that they are able to consider decisions on individual cases.

“We welcome the fact that they have now issued these decisions. We expect firms to comply with our complaints rules once decisions are issued.”

tom.dunstan@ft.com

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