We Introduce You

Some interesting news has come out of the FSA and OFT this morning.

Following mooting the idea of transferring Consumer Credit responsibility from the OFT to the FSA in 2005, the two organisations have announced deeper collaboration. In the long term, this could have quite an affect on the Secured Loans industry.

Some of the cooperation between the organisations has already taken place and in May they both consolidated guidance on secured loans advertising. This led to a new document being incorporated into their websites that explains how to create a compliant advertisement.

Things that come out of today’s announcement affecting the Secured Loans industry are :-

• Producing a single guidance document for firms whose advertising is jointly regulated
• To consult on rule change to allow firms to use just one risk warning in credit advertising
• Feasability studies in aligning authorisation and licensing process
• Consider scope for combined regulation of Payment Protection Insurance

There are several more items that may affect us, for more details see this months Fair Trading Magazine

I’ve never been a Sun Worshipper.

In fact I’m one of those people who whilst waiting for the Airport Coach in a foreign climes Hotel Reception get asked if I’ve just arrived.

It’s not the heat I don’t like - it’s the boredom of just sitting there and I’ve never seen the point of burning your skin for vanity’s sake.

Until Sun worshipping became a favourite pastime, people wanted their skin to be as white as white can be. The idea was that tanned skin was a sign of manual outdoor labour and was frowned upon by ’society’.

I just don’t understand why some people gauge how good a holiday they’ve personally had, or others have had, on the shade of white, red or brown they are.

But I’ll come clean. Something triggered me to write this post, as I’ve said before, I like walking, and yesterday I trudged up and down some hills in the Yorkshire countryside.

This morning? Well I was tomato red, with a sore neck, a rash on my arms, stiff legs and had a nose like Charlie Cairoli.

Sun worship?

No thanks, I’ll leave that to Ancient Egyptians, readers of the Daily Red Top and people who think it makes ‘em look ‘elthy

Here’s a quick round up of today’s Secured Loan titbits

Loanoptions has launched an updated website with a marketing toolbox and the added ability of being able to track secured loan applications on-line

Residential 1 has announced a secured loan packaging deal with Connect’s 1200 members - if you don’t know already, Connect is the largest group of Independent Mortgage brokers in the UK.

The Finance Centre has said it has seen a 34% increase in secured loan enquiries in the last six months compared to last year.

And finally…..

Some time ago I reported the Post Office had released a competitive PPI product. At the time I was concerned it could eat into the second loan PPI market because it was cheap, had good press coverage and marketing and gave cover for ‘bad backs’ and ’stress related illnesses’. Well I’m doing some more digging but it appears the product isn’t quite as attractive as I originally imagined. One of the problems is that claims are paid direct to the claimant rather than to the provider of the secured loan, unsecured loan, mortgage or whatever. This means that in the eyes of the DSS the money is seen as income.