Financial Services in a regulated industry, that means our governing body, The Financial Conduct Authority (or FCA) set out certain rules that we must follow. The idea is that this allows customers to compare things that may be important.
Our Fee
One of those rules is to make our customers or potential customers aware of our maximum fees. There is no real stipulation on our fees, it can be a percentage of the mortgage amount, a set amount for every customers or it can vary for certain circumstances – however if the fee varies, it can not just be a case of us charging “what we think we can get away with”.
At the time of writing this post, we set our Maximum fee at £1,495 and so that is what we have to show. However I do not believe that is a fair representation of what we actually charge and so we also added a something to say what our average fee is.
Our average fee is basically adding up all of our fees over a certain period and dividing by the number of mortgages we have done – we believe this is more accurate as in reality in the whole of 2020 we have only charged £1,495 once.
Our fee is also only charged on full offer of a Mortgage. Some brokers charge upfront before the application goes in and others will charge on completion.
Interest Rate
Another one of our requirements is that where we mention bad credit we have to also disclose what our average interest rate is for people who have had credit issues.
Because we more or less mention bad credit on every page, it makes sense to just include it on every page. The interest rate is of no relevance to people who have perfectly fine credit.
Personally, I do not believe this is a fair way to compare brokers. It does not compare all circumstances, we have customers with 2 defaults from 5 years ago who are placed on the high street at rates of under 2%, likewise we have applicants who have to pay rates closer to 6%, although I suppose there is an argument that over the course of a year this will balance itself out.
Summary
There you have it, a quick overview to what they are and why we have to display them.
The way we prefer to work however is to have a quick chat on the phone, within the space of 5-10 minutes, we can usually get enough information to be able to give you a pretty good idea of what our fee would be for your circumstances and the rates we believe we can obtain for you.
Do not worry too much about the information at the bottom of the page, lets have a chat and rather than basing it off generic information, we can give you something which should hopefully be a lot more accurate.