Mortgage lenders are being urged by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to overhaul their approach to a central part of its new regulations governing mortgages.

The regulatory watchdog will write to the chief executives of all mortgage lenders next month to ask them to simplify the ‘key facts’ documents that they provide to consumers at the point of sale.

FSA officials say that some lenders have been ‘voluntarily gold-plating’ the documents, by bringing in additional and unnecessary material. The documents range in length from two pages to 13, with an average of five pages.

An FSA spokesman said that over-complicating the documents defeated the object of informing consumers about their home loans. “We have been quite amazed,” he said.