First Direct has decided not to offer any further mortgages to consumers who are not already customers of the bank.
The reason is cited as a necessary move to enable the addressing of a backlog of requests for the bank's products after experiencing a surprisingly high demand.
Reacting to the news on the BBC web site, Doug Segal commented: "I think this is a sensible move by a bank that has historically been very fussy about who they give accounts to. It's media scaremongering...that turned the Northern Rock frame into a full-blown crisis when, if they had been quietly given a bridging loan, they could have probably resolved their issues without creating this atmosphere of banking mistrust and destabilisation."
