The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has confirmed that it is partnering with the Building Societies Association (BSA), to provide the latter’s members with sectoral information drawn from the CML’s regulated mortgage survey (RMS).

CML members have shared details of its mortgage sales transactions with the trade body for a decade, with the vast majority of reporting by firms on a monthly basis. This has enabled the CML to comment on market developments to members, policymakers, the media and other external stakeholders.

As part of its work on implementing the mortgage market review, the Financial Conduct Authority expects firms to embellish their reporting of new mortgage transactions, principally by providing a much more extensive set of affordability metrics and performance metrics for all live regulated mortgages. Expanded sales data reporting starts this quarter and the first performance data reporting (covering the first half of 2015) falls due in August.

As the BSA has for several years also been providing its members with sectoral data, based on a separate parallel reporting exercise, it was realised both organisations would benefit from working together. Going forward, building societies will only need to submit their product sales data information once – to the CML – and will in return receive consistent aggregate data for the building society sector and (assuming they are also CML members) the market as a whole.

This has prompted several building societies to submit their regulated data to the CML for the first time, so improving the representative nature of our data, both in aggregate and for the building society sector. Although it will take several months for new reporting patterns to settle down, the CML says it hopes that firms will eventually be submitting monthly data that represents 95% or more of overall regulated sales.