Joy all round at the weekend when Royal Bank of Scotland promised to give six months’ grace to customers struggling to keep up with their mortgages.
Leave aside the obvious point that this is a delay rather than a stay of execution.
The problem is: other banks seem unlikely to follow suit. RBS did not relax its lending criteria during the boom to the same extent as some of its more gung-ho peers. It has only 7 per cent of the mortgage market. And the level of repossessions by the Scottish bank are lower than the national average.
My colleagues in the FT banking team reported this morning that “none of the largest mortgage lenders – including HBOS, Lloyds TSB and Abbey – was prepared to match the promise made by RBS”.
UPDATE (Wednesday)
Gordon Brown today confirmed that Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock had joined in with the six-month repo holiday. Though many of the big mortgage lenders are still absent.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey
