LONDON - The Financial Services Authority, Britain's main financial regulator, is proposing that mortgage advisers pass an exam and be prohibited from making unsolicited calls to find customers.
The Financial Services Authority is to begin regulating the country's 33,000 brokers in October next year.
Mortgage brokers haven't been regulated, although those who sell home and car insurance have been overseen by the General Insurance Standards Council.
The FSA already is reviewing the regulation of home loans, which are taken out by more than 1 million people a year in the United Kingdom.
The financial regulator plans different standards for mortgages secured through brokers and those that aren't.
It also plans to assign mortgages two levels of risk, standard and those that are deemed of higher risk.
Mortgage advisers who want to call themselves independent would have to give advice on a range of different mortgages "representative of the whole market."
Mortgage brokers will also have to publish a so-called "key facts" document aimed at improving the marketing and explanation of financial products to consumers.
Companies would not be able to "cold call" people to sell them mortgages and could not contact them "unless a customer would expect to be contacted," the regulator said.
Mortgage advisers who start working after October 2004 will have to pass an examination.
