CML members vote for trade body merger

Members of the Council of Mortgage Lenders have voted in favour of the proposed trade body merger.

The trade body said 75 per cent of its members voted in favour of the merger, which will see the CML, the British Bankers' Association, Payments UK, and the UK Cards Association combine to form a mega-trade body.

In a statement, the CML says: “This decision is subject to a range of conditions being met in terms of the final form and operating plans of the body.

“Once the members of all the trade bodies have completed their own decision-making processes, if all the trade bodies agree on the proposal to amalgamate, the Financial Services Trade Association Review team will in due course make further announcements on the operational aspects of the integration.”

The merger was first suggested in an independent review last summer after pressure from nine major UK retail banks and a building society: Barclays, Clydesdale Bank & Yorkshire Bank, Co-operative Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, RBS, Santander, TSB and Virgin Money.

At the time the lenders said they wanted to review the current trade body setup because they wished to cut costs and avoid duplication of work.

The Building Societies Association and the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association have ruled themselves out of the merger.