At a time when opinion on charging a fee for service among Australian brokers remains divided, an exclusive poll in the UK has revealed that more than half of all mortgage brokers operating in the UK are already doing exactly that, reported mortgagestrategy.co.uk.
Of the more than 1,634 UK brokers surveyed by Mortgage Strategy, 53% said they charged fees for advice while the rest confirmed they took commission.
These results come as the UK's Association of Mortgage Intermediaries said it expected the Financial Services Authority not to ban mortgage broker commission as it had in the investment market.
A more likely outcome was that brokers would be encouraged to give clients the option of paying for advice or them receiving commission income, according to Robert Sinclair, director at AMI.
Earlier in the month in what may have been an Australian first, new mortgage manager Vanilla Loans ditched the commission-based income model in favour of a fee-for-service one.
Vanilla's idea is to have brokers charge borrowers a fee of between 1% and 1.5% of the loan amount and have lenders support and assist brokers to charge and collect the fee.
The launch was met with a mixed reaction from the local industry.
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