Watchdog must do better on mis-sold mortgages, says public

The City watchdog, the financial services authority, was today urged to take tougher action to help consumers who have been mis-sold endowment mortgages, after research revealed that most people did not think it was doing enough.

The Consumers' Association magazine Which? claimed that just 17% of people with the mortgages thought the FSA was doing enough to address their problems, while 87% were not aware that it publishes a factsheet designed to help people complain. The Association has called for the regulator to publish tables showing which firms have received the most complaints about mis-selling and how much compensation they have paid out, and to distribute its leaflet on making a complaint to all endowment mortgage holders.

Sheila McKechnie, director of the Consumers' Association, said: "While the FSA makes assurances to the media that it has done enough to help consumers, our survey suggests that the vast majority of the eight million people with endowments disagree.

"The FSA can no longer afford to sit on its hands over the issue of endowment mis-selling. It must take effective action now to enable victims of mis-selling to get more information and claim compensation.

"If the FSA considers its information campaign to help people with endowments a success then I'd hate to see one of its failures."

But an FSA spokesman dismissed the Consumers' Association's call as "hysterical and of little value to consumers". According to the FSA, in June this year more than 100,000 people had complained about endowment mis-selling since April 2000, and more than a third of these had been upheld, receiving average redress payments of ?3,000.