What has happened?
Did you take out a mortgage before 2004 or a secured loan before 2009? If the answer is YES, there’s a strong chance that you paid secret commission to the lender – without even knowing about it.
What does it mean for me?
Up to 2009, many lenders paid secret commissions to brokers and financial advisers, who made big profits from borrowers who had no idea. Are you one of them? If you used a broker or financial adviser to take out your mortgage or secured loan, you could claim thousands in compensation.
What did the Financial Conduct Authority discover?
What’s more, many of these people are now trapped in mortgages they can’t afford – but are not allowed to move to a mortgage lender with a better interest rate.
They are known as ‘mortgage prisoners’ and the difficult circumstances they have been put in were investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority in 2021. The FCA found that 47,000 people are mortgage prisoners. Despite being right up to date with their mortgage payments, they can’t switch to a lower mortgage rate - even though this would benefit them.
So what is secret commission?
Under consumer protection laws, a lender must always tell you about any fees and commissions charged to you. So, if you took out a mortgage or a secured loan and they paid a broker or financial adviser without telling you, that is secret commission. If this has happened, they are liable under the law to pay back all of the fees, charges and costs relating to your mortgage or secured loan.
What’s more, it’s not enough for the lender to tell you that a commission ‘may be payable’ or ‘a commission may be paid in certain circumstances.’ They must tell you upfront exactly how much the commission will be. If they don’t, it’s a form of fraud.
In fact, brokers and financial advisers should always:
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Act in your interest
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Never be loyal to any bank or lender
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Always disclose any profit made to their clients
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Never enter a conflict of interest
If you believe your broker or financial adviser didn’t do this, you may be entitled to claim secret commission compensation. To find out if you’re eligible, contact Hallbrook today and we’ll start the process as quickly as possible. We can help you fight your case to achieve justice and receive the financial redress you deserve.
You can make a claim directly to the firm, FOS or FSCS without the use of a third party completely free of charge. Any complaint must be made directly to the firm first before referring to the FOS.
Full details of our terms of engagement, including the fee structure can be found here.
Our friendly, honest, dedicated team are here to help you
Hallbrook has exclusively focussed on financial services negligence since 2010, during which time we have helped thousands of clients recover the compensation they deserve and all claims are prepared and managed for you, in-house by our financial negligence specialists.
We are proud of what we have achieved to date and we are firmly ‘On your side’
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