Youtube version of the clip available here
Regulation failure: Independent brokers unable to be ‘independent’
We were thinking of changing the way that brokers operate, by saying to our clients ‘our service comes at a price, we’ll advise you on any lender in the market and be totally independent, if we place your loan with one that pays commission you can set that against your fee, and if not then pay the fee’, doing so in the belief that totally transparent and independent advice is a good thing, and something that everybody wants, the broker, the consumer and the Regulator.
Sadly this is not the case, instead the Regulator (soon due another name change to ‘Central Bank Financial Services Authority of Ireland’) is relying on the letter of the law in the Consumer Credit Act of 1995 to ensure that brokers can’t give best advice. This is an example of total regulatory failure.
The actual portion of the code is S. 116.1.b which states ‘A person shall not engage in the business of being a mortgage intermediary unless— ( a ) he is the holder of an authorisation (“a …
The tipping point?
Today I am taking out the crystal ball, and asking it if these final weeks of December 2008 and the start of January 09′ are the tipping point of the greatest bear market since the 1930’s. The recession is huge, there has been billions in wealth wiped out, we passed the one trillion mark last month, the total is expected to be over 1.5 trillion USD in total.
The question is, how low will the path of this bear market go? [note: this is about the stock market and not the Irish property market] Central banks around the world are chopping rates, forming bailout packages and doing all possible to get the economy back on track. Today we will consider some of the reasons that we may be actually seeing the start of a tipping point.
I believe the trend will be that we saw what amounted to the greatest financial crash in modern history in nominal terms. The fallout in Q4 only escaped the ‘crash’ moniker (but ‘worldwide financial crisis’ doesn’t exactly have a …