Self-certification mortgages, which have always been surrounded by controversies and have been branded "liar loans", are all set to effectively disappear from the markets once and for all as the last significant name in the sector, Platform, pulls away.

A division of the Co-operative Bank, Platform recently announced its withdrawal from the self-certification market. The announcement has come nearly two weeks after the Financial Services Authority's issuing of a discussion paper which proposes a ban on self-certification home loans.

The scheme which was initially introduced to help self-employed people and freelancers, who cannot provide pay slips, buy their own homes. Under the program, borrowers can get a home mortgage without having to verify their income with a proof. Over time, the FSA discovered widespread abuse of the scheme as it was revealed that some lenders were letting borrows inflate their salary figures to get bigger homes. Many people who did this are now in a financial soup.

After the investigations began, many big names, like Nationwide's The Mortgage Works, BM Solutions and Bank of Scotland, pulled out of self-cert market. The only remaining big lender, Platform, will now pull itself away, signifying the definite extinction of the self-certification home mortgages.