After all, what banks and building societies are doing by offering fees is making sure they have every distribution outlet for their products covered – something you would expect them to do. An adviser, having accepted the procuration fee, could also receive a substantial commission payment from an insurance company if he recommends that the borrower take out an endowment policy to repay the loan capital.But Ian Darby, marketing director of leading mortgage brokers, John Charcol, defends the fees. These payments can amount to pounds 400 for each mortgage case that completes And there are other income sources as well. This is a cash payment made to advisers by lenders for bringing them the business. Private Label itself will earn substantial commission payments from the top-10 building society for the business generated. Given the obvious threat to advisers’ independence posed by the prizes, it is hardly surprising that the bulletin comes with the words: “Must not be shown to members of the public.”A survey published this week in Your Mortgage magazine reveals that there are over 40 lenders who offer advisers a “procuration fee”.

Thirty cases earns you pounds 3,000 and a Fiat Punto Cabriolet. And 60 cases earns you pounds 6,000 and all three prizes! You have until 1 March, 1997, to go at these prizes while earning substantial payments in addition,” it says.The product it is keen for advisers to push is a “near 3 per cent discount for two years” with the Britannia Building Society. “We will be paying you pounds 100 per completion on this product and allocating a massive 500 points per case. So just 10 cases earns you pounds 1,000, plus a luxury weekend Twenty cases earns you pounds 2,000 and a Ford Fiesta. While you would not expect advisers to do their jobs for nothing, home buyers may ask themselves whether the advice they are getting is strictly impartial, given some of the rewards on offer.
Private Label Mortgage Services, a mortgage design and distribution company that markets lenders’ products through the IFA channel, has even gone one step further by offering advisers a range of prizes that puts The Generation Game to shame.A private bulletin recently circulated by the company to thousands of independent advisers outlines the prizes.

WITH fewer and fewer people looking to buy a property, the competition for mortgage business has reached fever pitch. In fact, lenders are so keen to get their hands on your business that they will not only offer massive discounts and cashbacks; they pay “introducers” – mortgage brokers or independent financial advisers (IFAs) – a big fee if they place a mortgage case with them. It leaves a cut in stamp duty, permanent or temporary as the most likely contribution to a feel-good factor in the housing market – apart, that is, from another cut in interest rates.. The fact that several lenders have started giving low-cost or free mortgage-protection policies to help borrowers who lose their jobs has already partly offset the reduced state benefits for home-owners that take effect in a week’s time. Over-indexation of the threshold looks more likely than abolition.The abolition of long-term capital gains, and the taxation of short-term gains as income also looks more plausible in spite of arguments that it would create a fertile ground for the tax-avoidance industry to find ways of converting taxable gains into tax-free ones.Special help for the housing market could include the restoration of tax relief at 20 per cent or 25 per cent of interest payments But it would be another U-turn to explain.

But it would hardly help those whose assets are already below the inheritance tax threshold of pounds 154,000 and still face seeing their assets wiped out to pay for care. Abolishing inheritance tax might go some way to placate wealthier families threatened with selling the parents’ home to pay for long-term health care. As People magazine described it, Ms Marton was moping in a Paris hotel room on Christmas Day 1993, six months after ending her marriage with the celebrated ABC television news anchor Peter Jennings, when she picked up the phone and called Mr Holbrooke, an old friend who also happened to be holidaying in Paris. This does not appear to trouble his third wife, Kati Marton, a respected author and journalist whom he married in May this year. His second wife, Blythe Holbrooke, told Vanity Fair last year that he was “the ultimate Washington nightmare husband”, a ferociously single-minded political climber.

He served as ambassador to Bonn and a year ago was appointed to his present position.The drop in salary was substantial after Wall Street, but Holbrooke is a man who finds political power more alluring than money. His old associates from the Vietnam and Carter days invited him back to the fold when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. He joined Lehman Brothers, a big New York investment bank, at a salary of $900,000 a year. As he rose through the ranks he acquired a reputation as a brazen self-promoter but, while he lost the affection of many of his peers, he won the admiration of the people who made the decisions.