The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has today published a Call for Inputs on competition in the mortgage sector. The call will inform the focus of a market study into the sector planned to start in the first quarter of 2016.

The Call for Inputs seeks information on the effectiveness of competition in the sector. As well as investigating mortgage providers, the FCA is also examining the links between providers and other key parties such as third party administrators, packagers, and surveyors.

The planned market study follows significant regulatory changes to the mortgage market imposed from 2014 as part of the Mortgage Market Review. These changes imposed new requirements on the mortgage approval and sales process designed to prevent consumers from purchasing mortgages that were unaffordable or ill-suited to their needs. The FCA intends to consider any competition impacts due to the reforms as part of its work.

Frontier (Europe) regularly advises banks and other financial services providers on economics, financial and regulatory strategy and behavioural economics.

For more information, please contact Goran Serdarevic on g.serdarevic@frontier-economics.com, or call +44 (0)20 7031 7000.