Since the UK’s financial regulator the Financial Services Authority announced plans to ban self certification mortgages in their current form there has been a lot of controversy.

Agencies such as the Council of Mortgage Lenders attacking these plans and stating that millions of people who are on irregular incomes will now be frozen out of the mortgage market because of these new regulations.

However, the FSA has recently spoken out and said that those on irregular incomes will not be frozen out of the market providing they are genuine. The FSA was slated recently after branding these self certification mortgages ‘liar loans’ with the Council of Mortgage Lenders stating that not all people that have self cert mortgages are liars, and that most are genuine people that cannot prove their income in the usual way.

However, the FSA argued that genuine self employed people with irregular incomes would still have a way in which they could prove their income, and therefore would not necessarily be frozen out of the mortgage market. Lesley Titcomb from the FSA said that those suggesting that all self employed and contract workers would be unable to get a mortgage following the ban on self cert mortgages were ‘way off the mark’.

She added that there was no reason why a genuine self employed or contract worker would not be able to prove their income. She said: “Some have suggested that this means a self-employed person or a contract worker would not be able to get a mortgage and that we are blocking access to the market. This is way off the mark. We can think of no reason why the self-employed or a contract worker would not be able to verify their income.”

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