The FCA’s move to relax some of the rules around mortgage switching and term changes might sound sensible on paper—cutting admin, giving borrowers quicker access to better deals.
But let’s be honest: encouraging more execution-only decisions is risky. The idea that advice is some unnecessary hurdle is not just wrong, it’s dangerous.
Mortgages aren’t simple. They’re long-term financial commitments with a lot of moving parts—rate, term, fees, ERCs, future plans, job changes, family pressures, and so on.
It’s easy to mess it up if you don’t know what you’re looking at. Just because a borrower can switch without advice doesn’t mean they should.
This isn’t about being a protectionist. It’s about being responsible. Plenty of people will be tempted to grab a headline rate without realising they’re giving up flexibility or signing up for costs they can’t afford later on.
A badly chosen five-year fix or an overlooked fee can do real damage, especially in a market as uncertain as this one.
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And let’s not pretend that digital platforms or pre-filled forms are going to flag those risks. That’s not advice, it’s automation.
What we need is proper guidance: someone who knows what questions to ask, can spot the traps, and explain the trade-offs clearly.
Good advice isn’t about ticking boxes—it’s about understanding the full picture. That means stress-testing the borrower’s plans, looking beyond the rate, and tailoring solutions that hold up over time.
Quality advice protects clients from short-sighted decisions, flags what they might miss, and brings clarity where comparison sites and quick fixes simply can’t.
If the regulator’s move leads the market to sideline advice, we’re heading backwards. Advisers should use this as a cue to step up, not step out. This is the time to make the advice better focused, more practical, more transparent.
Because if we don’t, the outcome’s obvious. Borrowers will make poor choices, complaints will follow, and we’ll be back here again—only with more damage to clean up.
So yes, the rules are changing. But the job hasn’t. If anything, it just got more important.
