A "well-functioning" mortgage market must bridge the gap between protecting vulnerable consumers and the availability of affordable mortgages, according to the Financial Services Consumer Panel.

Mortgage brokers tightened their grip on the remortgage and home mover markets against direct channels in Q1, according to FSA and CML figures.

Mortgage expert Ray Boulger has criticised advisers who simply execute their clients' wishes without challenging or examining their ideas.

Mortgage Solutions editor Victoria Hartley talks to Sheila Nicoll, FSA director of conduct policy, at the Building Societies Association conference.

Lloyds Banking Group has confirmed four of its intermediary sales bosses have been asked to reapply for their jobs following the closure of Cheltenham & Gloucester for Intermediaries in March.

The number of mortgage products available through UK intermediaries has pushed beyond 10,000 for the first time in years.

Countrywide, the UK's largest mortgage broker and property services group, has acquired network and mortgage club Mortgage Intelligence.

Coventry Building Society has flagged its willingness to buy the so-called "good-bank" Northern Rock and remutualise the state-owned lender after its bail out and nationalisation in February 2008.

Rotherham-based Mortgage Talk has entered an agreement with adviser firm Robert Sterling to buy up its mortgage advice arm, giving the firm its first London-based advisers.

Chancellor George Osborne reports in today's Budget the government will extend the Support for the Mortgage Interest Scheme until 2013.