Stonebridge Group announces strong growth in 2017

Stonebridge Group, the mortgage and insurance network, has today (31^st January 2017) announced another year of strong business volume growth across its three key product areas.

In its core mortgage, life/protection and general insurance activities, business volumes were all up considerably:

• Mortgage completions were £5.7 billion for the year, up 34% on the £4.233 billion placed in 2016; mortgage applications placed through the business numbered 45,000 valued at £7.4 billion, up 30% on the previous year.
• Total life business volumes from both appointed representative (AR) and directly authorised (DA) firms also rose strongly with £22.9 million of life commissions. AR life insurance applications were up 25% on the previous 12-month period.
• Finally, just over £915k of general insurance business was completed in 2017, up 25% on the £731k placed through Stonebridge in 2016.

Stonebridge experienced an overall increase in adviser numbers of 5% during 2017 and puts its continued growth down to a considerable improvement in productivity across both its AR firms and directly authorised (DA) members.

The network has 550 active advisers, spread across 250 AR partner firms; plus there are over 200 advisers using Stonebridge’s proposition for DA firms, Stonebridge Genus.

Stonebridge announced its full results and plans for the year ahead at its annual conference, which was held at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham on the 29^th January.

Other headline figures announced at the conference included the fact the Group now supports 84 lenders and offered over 800 exclusive and semi-exclusive products during 2017.

The annual conference also included Stonebridge’s Achiever Awards for its member firms with the top Business Partners and advisers recognised for their achievements throughout last year.

Richard Adams, Managing Director of Stonebridge Group and Stonebridge Genus, commented:

“2017 was another very pleasing year for the Stonebridge Group particular in terms of the increase in productivity from advisers and firms, which has resulted in such sizeable increase in applications and completions across our core three product areas. Our adviser numbers again increased – this time by 5% - with most of our new members joining existing Stonebridge AR firms which shows the quality of their propositions, their own growth and their attraction to advisers wanting to make their mark in this sector.

“We believe the ‘numbers’ we’re announcing today are pretty unique in today’s marketplace and are a true reflection of Stonebridge’s position as one of, if not the, premier mortgage and protection network in the country. Our aim in the months and years ahead is to continue to provide our partner firms and advisers with a range of business opportunities, plus – as I outlined at this year’s conference – to ensure they can utilise the technology available to engage with clients in all the ways they wish to engage with advisers.

“Customer habits are changing and it’s therefore vital that firms develop a fully integrated tech ‘habit’ in order to deliver the required advice and to enhance their propositions. We will be announcing a series of enhancements and integrations to our own Revolution system during 2018 in order to help advisers make the most of the client portal, to benefit from client data feeding straight into broker’s systems, and to deal with any potential ‘threat’ from the growing number of ‘robo advice’ propositions, even if though they are ‘robo’ in name only given they need plenty of human intervention to deal with customers.

“2017 was another significant step forward for the entire Group and we have plenty of plans to develop our offering, and that of our member firms, to ensure we (and they) continue to lead the way and are fully prepared for everything the market can throw at them.”