Missold mortgage. Compensation anyone?

geekgeekgeek

Anyone successfully completed a claim in relation to a mortgage being missold? How was the process and what were you compensated for? Did you go through a company offering this service through no win no fee?

[Deleted User]

Waste of time and (potentially) very expensive. 

Companies offering this "service" often want payment upfront in what amounts to advance fee fraud. 

Why do you feel your mortgage was mis-sold? 

[Deleted User]

Extremely rare.  And compensation even rarer.

If you feel you were mis sold. simply send your complaint into your lender.  No need to pay a company to buy the stamp for you, especially if you have email.

geekgeekgeek

I was sold the mortgage via an IFA and understand that people can make claims if it is found they are advised incorrectly and another mortgage with a lower interest rate was available at the time. Anyone had any practical experience of this?

[Deleted User]

You would make your complaint to the IFA.  However, before doing so, check the paperwork to see why he recommended that particular mortgage. It;s not always to do with the rate.

geekgeekgeek

Thank you. Seems like a logical step.

SonOf

The uphold rate on mortgage missold complaints is very low.    Indeed, the FSCS recently criticised claims companies for putting in try-it-on complaints with no case to answer.   Its report says: “During 2018/19 we have seen a change in claims made to FSCS with increasing volumes of mis-selling claims being provided with very little substance or evidence to support the claim being made. Due to this, these claims have a low uphold rate.”

There is also some potentially dodgy activity in this area with some firms using mortgage claims as a reason to operate what looks like advanced fee fraud.  i.e. they tell you that they wont charge you to look at it.  Then they wait a month or two and tell you that you have a case but they need £x up front to be able to proceed but you will get back £y if you do.     There has not been a thread on this site where someone has said they have succeeded but plenty where they have said the claims company told them they had a case.

The main reasons you dont see much about missold mortgages is that regulation of mortgages only started in October 2004.  The banks did most of their mortgages on non-advised basis pre-credit crunch. So, you cannot complain about advice that was not received.  Broker arranged mortgages were mostly advised.      The FOS generally says it has no issue with pre-credit crunch arranged interest only mortgages.   However, where it does find in favour of the consumer, they take the gain in house price into account over the period.  For many, that level of gain wipes out any potential redress.

The FOS has concerns and dealt with issues where mortgages arranged on a sub prime basis where a prime lender would have lent the  money or where short term debts were added to the mortgage with insufficient justification (adding debts to mortgages is fine but not all debts are justified in doing so)