According to a report on Telegraph.co.uk, campaigners want lenders to be named and shamed if they take advantage of customers who have fallen behind with their mortgage payments. However, the Financial Services Authority has rejected their wishes, and said naming those who charged excessive fess to those in arrears on their mortgage could do more harm than good.
A spokesman for the FSA said: ?It could harm their commercial interest by suggesting that everything the lender did was poor.?
Repossession has reached 1,000 a week during the recession. By March around 200,000 borrowers were falling behind in mortgage payments.
Dominic Lindley of consumer group Which? said: ?Despite lenders pledging sympathy with their mortgage customers, many are hitting people in arrears with seemingly excessive charges. Surely it can?t be right to profit from those in financial difficulty.?
Mr Lindley said he couldn?t believe the FSA?s response: ?It?s extraordinary that the FSA refuses to name the lenders that it says are treating customers unfairly; it?s effectively protecting the commercial interests of companies trying to evict people from their homes. How will lenders be persuaded to improve their practices unless the FSA names and shames them??
Which? is hoping to convince the FSA to publish the names of lenders who treat their customers unfairly in mortgage arrears or repossessions. It also wants fines given out to lenders who break the rules.
In response, the FSA said that overall it considered ?that the need to protect the firms? commercial interests and the FSA?s efficiency and effectiveness in conducting and maintaining open and candid exchanges of information and views with firms, outweighs the public interest in providing the information?.
