Home reversion & home purchase plans - applying for a variation of permission

For your firm to be authorised to carry on regulated activities in relation to home reversion plans and / or home purchase plans that excludes lending, you must apply for a Variation of Permission (VoP).

To do this, please complete the new Variation of Permission application form for home reversions and home purchase plans.

Please ensure that you answer all the questions fully and provide any supporting documents that we ask for in section 8 of the application form.

Remember to enclose a cheque in full payment of the relevant application fee.

Any application that does not include the fee will be returned unactioned.

The application form is available for you to review and to start to complete from 22 September 2006. However, we cannot accept your application until 6 November 2006. Your application has to be based on the rules in their final form. So you cannot send it in until the final rules have been published. HM Treasury's statutory requirements also prevent us from processing your application until after 6 November 2006.

We will acknowledge your application, advising who will be the case officer assigned to your application.

How much will it cost?
There is a one-off fee to enable us to process the application. The amount will depend on whether the application is straightforward, moderately complex or complex. We expect most applications to be straightforward. The fee is 50% of the tariff set out in our rules. Information of the current fee levels can be found in FEE3 annex1R.

When applying for a variation of part IV permission you must send a cheque for the relevant fee in full with the application form. Your application will not be processed until the full fee is received (post-dated cheques will not be accepted).

The application fee is non refundable, so you need to be certain that you wish to go ahead with the application before applying.

How long will it take?
We process most applications well within the statutory standards which are set out in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Generally speaking, a straightforward application takes between two and three months. Our service standards are published on our website and, periodically, our performance against these standards. Our current performance is shown on the Service Standards pages.

For your firm to be authorised to carry on regulated activities in relation to home reversion plans and / or home purchase plans that includes lending you must apply for a Variation of Permission (VoP).

To do this, please complete the new Variation of Permission application form for home reversions and home purchase plans.

Please ensure that you answer all questions fully and pay particular attention to providing the supporting documents we ask for in section 8 of the application form. These documents must be sent with any lending application.

Because of the nature of your application, we may need to ask for further information/documents. We will know whether this is the case once you have sent your VoP form. We will base any such requests on a risk-based approach and keep them to a minimum.

Remember to enclose a cheque for the full relevant application fee.

Any application that does not include the requested supporting documents or the full application fee will be returned.

The application form is available for you to review and to start to complete from 22 September 2006. However, we cannot receive your application until 6 November 2006. As your application must be based on the rules in their final form, you can not send in your application until the final rules have been published. HM Treasury's statutory requirements also prevent us from processing your application until 6 November 2006.

We aim to acknowledge your application, telling you which case officer is assigned to your application.

How much will it cost?
There is a one-off fee to enable us to process the application. The amount will depend on whether the application is straightforward, moderately complex or complex. We expect most applications to be straightforward. The fee is 50% of the tariff set out in our rules. Information of the current fee levels can be found in FEE3 annex1R.

When applying for a variation of part IV permission you must send a cheque for the relevant fee in full with the application form. Your application will not be processed until the full fee is received (post-dated cheques will not be accepted).

The application fee is non refundable so you need to be certain that you wish to go ahead with the application before applying.

How long will it take?
We process most applications well within the statutory standards which are set out in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Generally speaking, a straightforward application takes between two and three months. Our service standards are published on our website and, periodically, our performance against these standards. Our current performance is shown on the Service Standards pages.

As you are not an authorised firm, you are unable to use the Variation of Permission process.

You will need to be granted authorisation as an FSA firm before carrying on any home reversion plan or home purchase plan regulated activity after 6 April 2007.

To apply, please refer to How do I get authorised?