In relation to anyone who has been victim of Hidden Commission or Secret Commission, this is where lenders have failed to disclose commission payments that they made to brokers who provided new business to them.
A broker is the person or company you agreed the product with, and signed the appropriate paperwork with.
A failure to disclose the existence and value of a commission paid by a lender to a broker places the broker in a position of a conflict of interest. The broker should act for his customer and in his customer’s best interests. A broker paid a commission payment by a lender, however, may be influenced to send his customer’s business to the highest bidder.
In order to enable a customer to make an informed decision about this, and whether the loan recommended was right for them, the broker should tell his customer about the commission. A failure to disclose commission payments may give rise to several types of claim and, consequently, several types of remedy.
At Claim Your Hidden Commissions, we have a specialist team of on site Solicitors and experts here to support you with your claim. We recognise that you, the client, has been lied to, and potentially financially impacted by others, our aim is to recover what’s rightfully yours and redress the balance.
As we know, Financial Services must be sold to you in a fair & clear way and must not mislead you. Sometimes it’s not even about the money as you may not have been financially impacted, it may be that you were exposed to risk that is totally unacceptable.
Many brokers may not have acted in their client’s best interests, ignoring their duty of care in return for a hidden, or Secret Commission.
Brokers are professionals who act on behalf of clients
Their job is to sell you financial products with sound and accurate advice. They arrange credit facilities and any associated financial products. Customers pay the broker a fee which is pre-agreed; this fee could be in the thousands.
What duties do brokers owe to their customers?
Brokers should:
When customers arranged loans with lenders such as:
Many customers did not realise that the lender paid a hidden amount to the broker by way of commission. This was in addition to the broker fee clients had already agreed. When paying a broker fee, clients expect the broker to act solely in their best interest. They must be completely loyal to the customer – this means putting you first, not their pockets. By accepting additional commission, that clients were unaware of and did not consent to; the broker was not acting solely in the customer’s best interests and had a divided loyalty. As a result, the relationship between the lender and the customer is unfair.