Bradford & Bingley hit by fraud
As we covered earlier, the £160 million loss reported by Bradford & Bingley for the first six months of 2009 was a shock to say the least. The situation would appear to have worsened over the last few weeks with the company citing an increase in fraud and negative equity as the main reasons why it has plunged to such a large loss. With the Council of Mortgage Lenders predicting that 65,000 people will lose their homes in the UK in 2009 the situation could get very much worse before it starts to improve.
Bradford & Bingley was one of the leading lights in the UK buy to let mortgage market although a number of "chickens have come home to roost" with the revelation that many incomes provided on application forms have proved to be unrealistic. When you also consider that 40% of Bradford & Bingley's mortgage book is now in negative equity it is no surprise that the company was taken over by the government to save it from collapse.
In the boom times fraud and misinformation are often ignored but in the bad times they can certainly come home to roost as Bradford & Bingley has found out during 2009.
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