Recently brokers have been accused of having a financial incentive to place loans with certain banks, we cannot deny that he playing field was far from level, at one end some banks were paying 1% and others were paying 0.5%, the scene was set for commission based decisions, that isn’t to say they occurred – but having such income disparity certainly put the odds in favour of best advice being at risk.
So it is with depressed joy that we can say this situation no longer exists. Depressed because getting to this point has meant a 50% decrease in our gross income (while VAT has risen which hurts a zero VAT business like brokerage, and transactions as well as acquisition costs have risen, along with increased lead times and processing hours in order to get cases approved), but joy because the air has been officially cleared surrounding intermediaries, we are essentially back to a level playing field on the commissions front.
At or near the 50 basis point procurement fee is where all of the major lenders who deal with …