Santander does 80% of its business via brokers

15 March 2010 | By Natalie Thomas

Santander has emerged with the highest proportion of broker business of the three big mortgage lenders in the UK.

The lender, which includes the Abbey for Intermediaries and Alliance & Leicester brands, has revealed that 80% of its mortgage business comes from brokers, leaving just 20% sourced direct.

Lloyds Banking Group derives 60% of its business from brokers, as does Nationwide Building Society.

Adrian Whittaker, key accounts director at Abbey, says: “More than 80% of the residential mortgages written by Santander in the UK come through the broker channel and this has always been the case.

“The intermediary channel is strategically important to us and we will continue to offer brokers the best support we can.”

Santander increased its gross mortgage market share to 18.6% last year, up from 13.9% in 2008.

Meanwhile, Lloyds group took a market share of 24% in 2009 compared with its 2008 share of 28.2%. Nationwide took a 9.5% market share in 2008 but its 2009 figure is yet to be disclosed.

Latest data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders shows Lloyds group was the biggest mortgage lender in 2008 with £78bn in gross mortgage lending, followed by Santander with £35bn in gross lending and Nationwide with £9bn.

But Nigel Stockton, sales director of mortgages at Lloyds group, says it still lays claim to the biggest broker distribution overall.

He says: “If you add up the broker distribution of Halifax, BM Solutions, Cheltenham & Gloucester, Lloyds TSB and Scottish Widows Bank and consider that last year there was still business from Bank of Scotland and Intelligent Finance, we are the bigger distributer.”

Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at John Charcol, says: “Bearing in mind that Lloyds group fell back a bit last year Santander would have been the biggest brand for a lot of brokers. But there wouldn’t have been much between the top three lenders.”

As Mortgage Strategy went to press the proportion of broker business done through Barclays, the fourth biggest mortgage lender, was unavailable. But David Finlay, intermediary business director at Barclays, says typically brokers account for 60% of total lending.