Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Halifax Collar Unenforceable

The Times reports that the 3% mortgage "collar" imposed by Halifax on over 500,000 of their tracker mortgage customers, which allows Halifax to evade passing on rate cuts below 3%, may in fact be unenforceable.

Jon Pain, the FSA's retail market manager, said that collars should be included in a lender's key facts illustration (KFI). Halifax, rather oddly, removed the details of its collar from its key facts in 2005.

Mr Pain told the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML):

"If it is not [included] you run the real risk of both breaching our disclosure requirements and having an unfair contract term you cannot enforce."

The question is will the FSA follow their warning through, if Halifax and others ignore it?

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