The City watchdog has banned a record number of firms that sell mortgages, pensions, investments and insurance.
As the economic crisis deepened and regulators clamped down on rogue businesses, the number of financial firms forbidden to practise by the Financial Services Authority rose by more than 50 per cent in the past year. Using the Freedom of Information Act, The Times discovered that 107 firms were banned, of which one third were mortgage advisers. Many were guilty of mortgage fraud and had shown no compunction in inflating their own incomes and those of their clients. In one instance, a mortgage broker had duped a lender into giving one customer a home loan more than eight times their income...
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