Lauren Fouracre (pictured), managing director of Fouracre Financial, has proposed forcing lenders to expose their lowest home loan rates through open banking APIs, part of a broader push to close what she describes as a structural imbalance between brokers and direct bank lenders.
Fouracre's central proposal is what she calls channel-agnostic pricing: using open banking infrastructure to stop lenders offering hidden discounts direct to consumers.
Lenders should be required "to expose their absolute lowest risk-based pricing via open banking APIs, prohibiting banks from offering direct-to-consumer rates or financial incentives that are structurally hidden from or unavailable through the broker network for the exact same risk profile," she said.
Fouracre paired this with a call for regulatory harmonisation, extending the Best Interests Duty to bank employees so lending staff face the same legal and documentation obligations as brokers.
"Regulatory harmonisation is needed to extend the statutory Best Interests Duty to direct bank lenders," she said, adding this would let "operational costs and approval speeds naturally equalize."
Fouracre traces both proposals back to what she sees as a two-sided disadvantage for brokers. On compliance, brokers must document every recommendation against the strict, principles-based Best Interests Duty, a legal standard she says direct bank staff aren't held to in the same way.
"The primary challenge facing the mortgage industry is an uneven playing field caused by a regulatory gap and weaponized pricing," she said. "Mortgage brokers are bound by a strict, principles-based Best Interests Duty that forces them to absorb heavy compliance costs and endure slower turnaround times, whereas direct bank staff operate under a much lower 'not unsuitable' standard."
On pricing, she pointed to major banks using their scale to offer cashbacks and discounted rates exclusively through proprietary channels, "actively undercutting the third-party broker channel that drives the majority of the market."
Fouracre's push for structural reform is rooted in how she built her own business. She became a broker in 2023 after two years as a credit assessor, launching Fouracre Financial with her husband while raising three young children. Resilience through that period has shaped her approach to industry change since.
"Over time, adversity became our best friend," she said, describing how she uses shifts such as policy changes as "an opportunity to find a new angle that can benefit your clients."
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