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Mortgage Lender Benchmark survey H1 2024

ended 13. June 2024

Newspage's attention was drawn to this survey by Smart Money People, which states: “Today we’ve released the twelfth edition of our Mortgage Lender Benchmark, covering broker opinions on UK mortgage lenders for the first half of 2024. The overall average lender satisfaction rating is 83.7%, which is up 0.8% on H2 2023. This figure is the highest ever recorded in our Mortgage Lender Benchmark, and suggests that lenders have continued to deliver good service to brokers, with the recent market turbulence starting to ease. The average Net Promoter Score (NPS) improved by an impressive 6.5 points to +38.7, which is again the highest figure ever recorded in the study.” Newspage asked brokers for their thoughts, below.

6 responses from the Newspage community

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Katy Eatenton
Mortgage & Protection Specialist at Eatenton Finance
Hahahahah… brokers happy with lenders....what on earth? Brokers are currently the most dissatisfied they’ve ever been. I’ve yet to speak to a fellow broker that hasn't got a gripe or a moan about something. Getting a mortgage offered these days is harder than catching water with a fork.
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Ken James
Director at Contractor Mortgage Services
Maybe they surveyed the lenders directly by mistake? Short notice of rate withdrawals, coupled with shoddy service, makes it hard to believe lenders getting a 60% satisfaction rating, never mind one over 80%. But before we get too carried away let's be open and honest with our feedback. Some lenders have actually worked hard to help brokers get cases over the line, and given them longer notices of removing rates. We cannot tar all lenders with the same brush, but it is clear that some lenders have been absolutley awful. This report needs a thorough rinsing as its not a real representation of what we brokers feel.
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Simon Bridgland
Director at Charwin Private Clients
Net Promoter Scores are complete BS. They are aways geared to be answered in a positive way, namely just how the author wants it to be, unless the person completing the survey is scoring the lowest possible grade. Clearly lenders using these are trying to convince shareholders and award panel judges of their good merits, rather than being focused on their end users. Other than being asked to vote for best lender or best BDM, I can name only a couple of lenders who have asked me to review them. Are they afraid of the response? Many should be. Of the ones who did send a request, sorry but the life drained from my body as soon as I caught a waft of the request.
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Riz Malik
Independent Financial Adviser at R3 Wealth
Since Trussonomics, some lenders have massively dropped the ball so I was very surprised by the findings of this report. My concern is that those lenders who are struggling to cope now will have a meltdown when this market picks up, which I think will be sooner rather than later. Let's not even mention the 24-hour pledge and the challenges we had with trying to get lenders to adopt that during the market turmoil of the past couple of years. Your average broker is less enamoured of lenders right now than enraged.
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Rohit Kohli
Director at The Mortgage Stop
I'm surprised by the results of this survey. Certainly, mental health in the industry has been a big issue and it took an almighty effort from The Broker Collective to gain any traction on lenders acknowledging that 3 hours' notice of rate changes was not acceptable. One comment from a colleague was that it often feels lenders are looking for a reason not to lend rather than how they could look at reasons to lend with many brokers regularly talking about how lenders are inconsistent in their decision-making. Whilst I'm sure the results of the survey are reflective of the people asked, I'm not sure the results are reflective of the industry.
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Ben Perks
Managing Director at Orchard Financial Advisers
Recent reports have shown that broker mental health is at an all-time low, so it doesn’t stand to reason that they’re overwhelmingly satisfied with lender performance. Lenders haven’t covered themself in glory so far this year. In these tricky times, though, some lender employees have really stepped up. Business Development Managers have been hands on and willing to get stuck in and if you get a good underwriter it is worth its weight in gold. These individuals that are going above and beyond deserve the credit, not the institutions.