As featured in FTAdviser and Newspage, 14 September 2026.
From the day the business started in 2003, The Mortgage Consultancy worked as part of a mortgage network. In October 2025 that changed: we became directly authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, holding our own permissions for the first time in the firm’s history.
There was no falling out. The network had served us well, and the parting was amicable on both sides. What had changed was us. The business had grown into something the network structure was no longer built to hold, and our clients were increasingly asking for help we could not give them in-house.
Our directors, Peter and Hannah Vandervennin, spoke to FTAdviser and Newspage this week about the decision. This is the fuller version: what direct authorisation actually means, why we made the move, and what it changes if you are one of our clients.
Directly authorised or appointed representative: what is the difference?
Every mortgage broker in the UK has to be regulated by the FCA, but there are two ways to get there.
- Appointed representative. The firm carries out regulated business under the permissions of another authorised firm, its principal. A mortgage network is a principal. It takes regulatory responsibility for the brokers inside it and, in return, sets the rules they work within: which systems they use, which areas they can advise in and how their process runs.
- Directly authorised. The firm holds its own FCA permissions and is directly responsible to the regulator for its advice. It chooses its own compliance support, technology and lender relationships, and it decides for itself where its appetite for risk sits.
Neither model is better in the abstract. They suit different businesses at different stages, which is exactly the point Peter makes about networks further down.
Two generations, one firm
Peter began his career in financial services in 1982 and later worked as an independent financial adviser. By 2015 around 80% of his business was mortgages, so he narrowed his focus to mortgage and protection advice, and over time the firm built a particular reputation with landlords and property investors.
Hannah joined in 2018. She came from a support worker role at a homelessness charity and had planned to stay for a year. Instead she qualified, began advising, and took on the operational side of the firm, with a particular eye on process and technology. Today the business employs 11 people.
The two of them bring different instincts to the same decisions. Peter advised through the 2008 financial crisis, and that experience runs through how cautious the firm is about risk. Hannah has pushed for better technology, more efficiency and a wider range of finance. Direct authorisation is where those two instincts met. You can read more about both of them in our story.
Why we left the network after more than 20 years
Our clients outgrew a standard mortgage
Landlords have always been at the centre of our work. What we saw over the last few years was that portfolio landlords, the ones running their property as a serious and growing business, were no longer only asking about buy-to-let mortgages. They wanted bridging finance to buy before they sold, commercial mortgages for mixed-use and business property, and development finance for conversions and new builds.
Inside the network, a large share of that work could end up being referred to someone else. As Hannah put it, if you have a longstanding customer and you cannot service what they need, that is frustrating. Being directly authorised means we can now see those clients through the whole of their borrowing, not just the part that fits a template.
The network did try to make it work, including suggesting options such as running a secondary company. But as Peter explained, “ultimately we didn’t fit in the same way as we grew.”
We wanted to choose our own technology
Under the network, we had to use a prescribed point-of-sale system. We could use other tools alongside it, but information then had to be keyed in twice or copied back into the network’s system. That time came straight out of the part of the job that matters most to clients.
“Technology has been a huge driver for us. Going directly authorised allowed us to choose the technology we wanted rather than having to keep bending what we did around what the network said was the best thing.”
Hannah Vandervennin · Director, The Mortgage Consultancy
Since going directly authorised we have adopted AI-enabled software that builds a mortgage fact-find from the conversation we have with you, and fills in the relevant regulatory sections from the documents you upload. The goal was never to automate for the sake of it. It is to hand the adviser back the hour they would have spent on forms, so they can spend it going through surveys and drawings and working out whether a deal genuinely works for you.
We wanted control over the customer journey
Put simply, in Peter’s words: “For us, we just got to the stage where we wanted that control so we could give a better customer process and outcome.” Control over the technology, over the areas we advise in, and over how a client moves from first call to completion.
More freedom means owning more responsibility
Leaving a network is not only about freedom. Inside one, the rules are black and white: you can do this, you cannot do that. As a directly authorised firm, those lines are ours to draw, and so is the responsibility for drawing them well.
We work with an independent compliance partner who tells us what the rules require and what really good practice looks like. The decision about whether we are comfortable with a type of business then sits with us. One example: we have chosen not to advise on debt consolidation, because it does not fit our own risk appetite.
The same thinking shapes how we approach bridging. It is easy for a borrower to focus on the opportunity at the end of a project. We focus first on the exit, because a bridging loan is only as safe as the plan to repay it.
“If the numbers don’t work on the exit, we don’t want to put somebody into it. There are deals we’ve turned away because we’d rather be able to sleep at night than know we’ve put someone in a position where they’ve lost money or another asset.”
Peter Vandervennin · The Mortgage Consultancy
To support that wider range of lending, most of our advisers now hold advanced specialist property finance qualifications.
What direct authorisation means if you are our client
Some things have not changed, and it is worth being clear about them. Our mortgage advice was regulated before and it is regulated now, and you still have the protection of FCA rules and access to the Financial Ombudsman Service. What has changed is what we can do for you:
- More of your borrowing under one roof. Residential, buy-to-let, bridging, commercial and development finance, arranged by advisers who already know your portfolio and your plans.
- More adviser time on the parts that matter. Less duplicated paperwork means more time analysing your deal, your exit and your numbers.
- A process designed around you. We choose the systems and the steps, so we can build the journey around what clients actually need rather than a one-size-fits-all process.
- Straight answers about risk. If a deal does not stack up, particularly on the exit, we will tell you, and we will not put you into it.
If your situation does not fit a standard lender’s criteria, our page on specialist and complex lending explains how we approach it, and our case studies show the kind of deals we place.
Growing a portfolio or planning a project? Tell us what you are trying to do and we will work through the finance with you, from bridging and refurbishment through to the long-term mortgage, and give you an honest view on whether the numbers work. The initial conversation is free and there is no obligation.
Networks still have their place
None of this is an argument against networks. Peter is the first to say they do a valuable job, especially for new advisers and smaller firms. A network interprets what the FCA requires, tells you what you need to do to stay compliant and handles regulatory returns on your behalf. In exchange, as he puts it, “obviously they take a slice of the action.”
For a firm starting out, that support can be exactly right. For us, after more than two decades, it had become a structure we were working around rather than with.
How long does FCA direct authorisation take?
This is the question other brokers ask us most. Direct authorisation has a reputation for being slow, expensive and daunting. Some of that comes from past FCA backlogs, when firms waited a year or more for a decision, and those stories have stuck.
By law, the FCA has to decide a complete application within six months, and an incomplete one within twelve. Our own authorisation took less than six months, and could have been quicker had the timing of our network exit allowed. What helped most was talking to firms that had already been through it.
“Don’t let the fear make the decision for you. Understand the responsibility you’re taking on, speak to firms that have done it and work out whether it fits the business you want to build. For us, the reality was far less daunting than we had been led to expect.”
Hannah Vandervennin · Director, The Mortgage Consultancy
If you are an adviser who would like to work in a firm set up this way, take a look at careers at The Mortgage Consultancy.
What comes next
Going directly authorised was not the finish line. For where the business had got to, it was the natural next step, and it gives us room to keep building: better technology, a broader range of specialist finance and a client journey we can keep improving without asking anyone’s permission but our own and the regulator’s.
The Mortgage Consultancy is a trading name of The Fincon Service Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under Firm Reference Number 1034681. You can confirm our permissions on the FCA Register. We work from Erith and help clients across Bexley, London, Kent and the wider UK.
Written by
Hannah Vandervennin, Director
Hannah joined The Mortgage Consultancy in 2018 and advises clients on specialist property finance. She leads the firm’s technology direction and took it through FCA direct authorisation in 2025. Read our story →
This article is general information, not personal advice. Quotes are drawn from interviews published by FTAdviser and Newspage on 14 September 2026. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. Some forms of buy-to-let, commercial and bridging finance are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.