Government breaking its bargain with the people says Cameron

Conservative leader David Cameron has attacked the Government for “breaking its bargain” with the people to deliver quality services in return for taxes.
Speaking in Birmingham today, Cameron outlined his three-pronged approach for how the Tory Government would “spend within its means”, reducing the demand on the state, reforming public services and improving efficiency and transparency.
He [...]

Mortgage deals down 20,000

The number of total mortgage deals available has been slashed by more than half in the last six months, claims Mortgage Monitor.
The monitor has discovered that the number of mortgages available in the UK has fallen 20,000 (56%), from 36,000 six months ago, to just 16,000 today.
This also represents a 76% drop from this time [...]

Future permanently withdraws from market

Citi has decided to stop intermediary lending through Future Mortgages with effect from Wednesday 21 May.
Citi’s UK consumer operation is to focus on growing consumer business through the Citi and Egg brands and stop new lending through its Future Mortgages and CitiFinancial portfolios.
Future CEO Mark Charlesworth confirmed to BestAdvice.net that the move was “permanent”.
In a [...]

TMB offers online offer facility

All TMB brokers and packagers will be able to access their client’s offer documents online, allowing them to print them in their own office.
By using the TMBi system, mortgage offers will now be available in PDF format for all applications submitted online and can be saved locally to the broker’s machine. Users will no longer [...]

Tenant demand continues to increase

Rents continued to rise in April as tenant demand for private rented properties grew, according to Paragon’s monthly buy-to-let index. Rents have risen nearly 14% over the last year to stand at £12,048 in April, having just broken the £1,000 a month barrier in March.
Paragon says that a key contributory factor to the buoyancy of [...]

Warning sounded over compliance failures

Home Buyer Systems has warned brokers and networks that “time is running out” for them to put right common compliance failings.
Richard Angliss, Home Buyer’s managing director, said: “As the FSA’s enforcement action against Thinc group – including a £900,000 fine – demonstrates, there are still major gaps in the systems and controls and record keeping [...]

Brokers see more advisory role continuing

More than 75% of brokers feel that their role is becoming more advisory and will continue to become so over the next six months, according to research by Alliance & Leicester mortgages.
Almost half (47%) of brokers believe they provide clients with more insight and thought than they did six months ago, mainly due to lower [...]

Abbey makes further rate cuts

Abbey has cut rates on all flexible and tracker mortgages and to some of its fixed rate deals.
Fixed-rate products in the 75% Loan-to-Value (LTV) range are reducing by up to 0.17% and the five-year fix is now at 5.75%. The rate reductions are being made to the two-year, three-year and five-year fixed rate products at [...]

Vertex powers First Direct’s insurance quotation service

Vertex Financial Services has completed development of a new life insurance straight-through-processing (STP) system for First Direct.
This move was made in conjunction with the product provider, HSBC Life (UK) Limited.
Following the launch today, Vertex’s technology solution will allow First Direct’s telephone and online banking customers to obtain life insurance quotes and immediate cover.
In April 2006, [...]

Gravity drives BDS app increase

BDS is claiming a five-fold increase of online enquiries as a direct result of its specialist online sourcing system Gravity.
The packager says that Gravity’s use has resulted in around 90% of new business enquiries. Almost half of these enquiries then go through to the Decision-In-Principle (DIP) stage and then, assuming they fit the product criteria, [...]