A high percentage of mortgage brokers believe that the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) has made lenders too risk averse according to research from EDM Mortgage Support Services (EDM MSS).

72% of brokers believe lenders are now too risk averse, with 23% saying they have become excessively so.

Joe Pepper, EDM MSS Managing Director, said: “The MMR was always going to increase the administrative burden on mortgage brokers, it was just a question of how much. But the jury is clearly still out on whether the risk assessments under the MMR have actually been worthwhile.

“Improving the quality of the communication platform used by all parties to the transaction could certainly help both ease the administrative burden and improve the accuracy of the risk assessments, leading to higher quality mortgage business and possibly giving lenders more confidence to lend to borrowers.

“Nearly half (43%) of mortgage brokers say they would like to see all parties involved in mortgage transactions communicating via a single platform. Greater use of quality systems would certainly enable brokers and other parties to deal with large amounts of data with speed and accuracy, freeing up time for industry personnel to add value elsewhere in their companies.”

Brokers are also divided on whether the risk assessments of mortgage borrowers are more accurate now as a result of MMR, with 45% saying it is and 39% saying this is not the case.