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20 May 2021

New research from Smart Money People, the leading financial services customer review and insight website, has found that broker satisfaction with how quickly lenders are processing applications through to offer has increased by 6.5% since H2 2020.

All sectors of the mortgage industry have increased their satisfaction scores for speed. The biggest improvement was seen in the building society sector, where broker satisfaction with a lender’s speed increase by 9.9%.

Broker satisfaction with the speed that lenders are processing first time buyer applications through to offer has also increased considerably according to Smart Money People, who found this case type increased by 8.9%. Satisfaction with speed for moving home cases saw a similar increase of 8.8%, and remortgage cases saw a 5% increase.

Commenting on the findings, Jacqueline Dewey, CEO of Smart Money People said: “The end of last year was a perfect storm for mortgage lenders; combining the uncertainty around whether the stamp duty holiday would be extended, incredibly high levels of demand, and lenders still adapting to ways of working not even predicted in the worst-case disaster recovery scenarios. Fast forward to now and brokers seem to be satisfied with how lenders have resolved some of the issues faced last year, and the extension to the stamp duty holiday seems to have given lenders some breathing space to catch up on their pipeline.”

15% of all feedback received referred positively to how quickly a lender processed applications. Feedback from brokers on the lenders they used included:

“They were fantastic, processing times were great, never had to chase, clear concise request from underwriter, after sending dealt with quickly and offer issued within a week.”

And “Application submitted, documents confirmed over the phone and offer issued within 48 hours.”

Smart Money People have been tracking brokers’ satisfaction with a lender’s speed since H2 2018. Combined scores for all lenders have ranged from 75.8% in both H2 2018 and H1 2020, down to 67.2% in H2 2020.

The findings form part of Smart Money People’s bi-annual Mortgage Lender Benchmark report, which asks brokers to give feedback on the last five lenders they have attempted to place business with. The full report with H1 2021 findings will be released by Smart Money People in early June.