Mortgage Brokers: directory of firms

The Financial Services Register is the check that matters. Search the firm's name or reference number and the entry lists the regulated activities it may carry on. For a mortgage broker you are looking for advising on regulated mortgage contracts and arranging (bringing about) regulated mortgage contracts. A firm holding only credit broking permission cannot advise you on a home loan.

Many brokers trade as appointed representatives. They appear on the Register under a principal firm, which is answerable for what they do. The FCA suggests asking the principal to confirm what the appointed representative is permitted to do and how you would be protected if something went wrong. The Register's Directory also lists individuals, their current roles and any disciplinary or regulatory action on their record, so you can look up the named adviser as well as the firm.

The Register also carries warnings about unauthorised firms and about clone firms that copy an authorised firm's details. If a firm contacts you out of the blue, take the contact details from the Register rather than from the message.

Most residential mortgage sales in the UK are advised. In an advised sale the firm assesses whether the mortgage is suitable for you and is answerable for that judgement. Execution-only means you have chosen the product yourself and the firm is, in the FCA's words, not required to assess the suitability of that contract. Before an execution-only sale the firm must tell you clearly that you lose the suitability protections, and you must confirm in writing or on a recording that you understand and still want to go ahead.

Execution-only is not open to everyone. The FCA limits it to defined cases such as high net worth mortgage customers, rate switches and variations, and customers who have been offered advice and turned it down. It is blocked outright for right-to-buy purchases of your own home, for borrowing whose main purpose is debt consolidation, and for shared equity credit agreements.

On 22 July 2025 the FCA changed the rules so that talking things through with a firm no longer automatically turns the conversation into advice. The stated aim was to let people discuss options while keeping the option to seek advice, and to make it easier to remortgage with a new lender or shorten a term. In practice you should still be told plainly whether what you are getting is advice or information.

The FCA requires an intermediary to disclose the range of mortgages it considers, and suggests the wording. A firm searching the relevant market says it is not limited in the range of mortgages it will consider for you. A firm using a panel says it only offers mortgages from a stated number of lenders, and must either name them or offer to send the list within five business days. A firm tied to one lender must say so and name it.

A broker can be paid by you, by the lender, or by both. The lender's payment is called a procuration fee. The FCA requires the firm to set out any fee it charges you, when it becomes payable and whether it is refundable, and to tell you whether it receives commission from the lender and whether that commission reduces your fee.

Where the exact amount is not yet known, the firm must give a percentage with a worked example, a range with the factors that decide where you fall in it, or an hourly rate with the factors affecting the hours. Ask at what point a fee stops being refundable. Some firms take nothing until completion; others charge on application, which matters if a valuation kills the case.

A loan is a regulated mortgage contract only where the borrower is an individual or trustee and at least 40 per cent of the land is used, or intended to be used, as a dwelling by the borrower or a related person. That test is why an ordinary buy-to-let bought as an investment sits outside the regime while a loan on the home you live in sits inside it.

There is a narrower category of consumer buy-to-let, for landlords who did not set out to run a property business, such as someone who inherited a house or is letting a former home. Those contracts carry their own regime and a firm arranging them must be registered for it.

Second charge mortgages are inside the mortgage regime. They moved across from the consumer credit rules on 21 March 2016, when the FCA implemented the Mortgage Credit Directive, so a firm arranging a second charge loan on your home needs mortgage permissions and must follow the same advice and affordability rules.

Complain to the firm first. It normally has up to eight weeks to respond, and fifteen days for complaints about payment services, fraud and scams. If you are unhappy with the answer, or you get none, you can take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free to use and does not require you to pay a lawyer or a claims management company.

Time limits apply. You have six months from the date on the firm's final response to come to the Ombudsman, and you generally need to have complained within six years of the problem, or within three years of realising you had cause to complain.

If the advising firm has failed and cannot pay, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme can pay up to 85,000 pounds per eligible person per firm for bad mortgage advice, for claims against firms that failed after 1 April 2019. That covers the advice, not the loan: a mortgage is still owed whoever ends up holding it.