Promotions rules for individual mortgage contracts and debt advice

“The absurd over-regulation of debt counselling promotions is keeping reputable organisations out of the marketplace,” says Adam Samuel; while “it is difficult to fathom why a representative example that nobody ever reads should stand in the way of a competitive individual mortgage offer market.”

Adam SamuelBA LLM DipPFS MCISI FCIArb Certs CII (MP&ER) Barrister and Attorney may be contacted atadamsamuel@aol.com.For links to where you can buy the second edition of ‘Consumer Financial Services Complaints and Compensation’, see www.adamsamuel.com/book.

In her report on the London Capital & Finance scandal, Dame Elizabeth Gloster correctly concluded that there was nothing wrong with the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules and powers to deal with investment promotions. It is perhaps a good thing for the beleaguered regulator that she was never asked to look at the rules in the same area for mortgages and debt advice. In the first case, she would probably have run across a requirement that pointlessly and in an anti-competitive way prevents the effective presentation of individual products. In the second, she would have found some rules with which no firm, however much its activities serve the public interest, can possibly comply while coherently setting out its wares.