The biggest improvement was seen in the building society sector, where broker satisfaction with a lender’s speed rose by 9.9%
New research from Smart Money People has found that broker satisfaction with how quickly lenders are processing applications through to offer has risen by 6.5% since the second half of 2020.
All sectors of the mortgage industry have raised their satisfaction scores for speed. The biggest improvement was seen in the building society sector, where broker satisfaction with a lender’s speed rose by 9.9%.
Broker satisfaction with the speed that lenders are processing first time buyer (FTB) applications through to offer has also risen considerably according to Smart Money People, who found this case type rose by 8.9%. Satisfaction with speed for moving home cases saw a similar rise of 8.8%, and remortgage cases saw a 5% rise.
15% of all feedback received referred positively to how quickly a lender processed applications.
Smart Money People have been tracking brokers’ satisfaction with a lender’s speed since the second half of 2018. Combined scores for all lenders have ranged from 75.8% in both the second half of 2018 and first half of 2020, down to 67.2% in the second half of 2020.
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.
Dewey said: 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.