Home Trust reaffirms its commitment to brokers

Home Trust delivered a message of confidence to its broker partners.

Despite having to sever ties with a number of brokers who falsified client documents, Home Trust is still dedicated to the channel.
 
“We have full confidence in the channel and we are not wavering in our commitment to brokers,” Pino Decina executive vice president of residential mortgage lending at Home Trust told MortgageBrokerNews.ca.
 
And while an investigation may be ongoing, Home Trust says the regulators have been “complimentary” about how it has so far handled falsified documents on originations.
 
“As a federally regulated lender we have kept all the necessary parties informed,” Decina said. “The regulators are very complimentary of how it has been handled.”
 
The lender announced Thursday that it had suspended 45 brokers for falsifying client income information.
 
But it has not yet made the decision about the length of the suspensions, but it does belive it has flagged all of the originations containing falsified information.
 
“At this point it’s hard to say,” Decina said “Based on what we see right now this is a long-term suspension.”
 
Decina is confident that nothing could have been done differently to flag those mortgage applications.
 
“In hindsight there is always something we could have done better … (but) even if certain things were done differently it would not have caught some things,” Decina said. “With changing guidelines and heightened requirements there is going to be due diligence over and above what we’ve done in the past.”
 
The company is confident it is not a pervasive issue, noting that those flagged for falsifying documents were a mere 45 out of 4,000 broker partners.
 
FSCO, meanwhile, will neither confirm nor deny that it has an ongoing investigation pertaining to Home Trust.
 
“In cases where FSCO believes there may be non-compliance with legislation and regulations, we conduct a thorough investigation.  Depending on the findings, we may then take enforcement action,” Malon Edwards, senior communications officer for FSCO told MortgageBrokerNews.ca in an email. “To maintain the integrity of all of our investigations, FSCO can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any specific complaints or investigations against individuals or businesses.”