There’s no doubt that the role of the Mortgage Broker has changed considerably with information made available at a recent Professional Development Day showing that the percentage of home loans written through mortgage brokers increasing from 43.9% in the first quarter of 2012 to 50% in 2014.
As La Trobe Financial Asset Management report, over the last 20 years the face of Australian mortgage lending has been transformed by the development of the mortgage broking industry. All Australian borrowers owe a debt of significant financial and emotional gratitude to the brokers who assisted, together with non-bank securitisation businesses, in breaking the stranglehold that a small number of large banks had on mortgage lending prior to that.
This transformation saw bank margins on home loans crunched from 4% down to the 2% level they have broadly remained at ever since and contributed to significantly improved lending solutions, delivering what borrowers really want.
In the mid-1990s, Australians’ national awareness of this transformation was literally captured and characterised by the face of this change, as Aussie John Simonds’ iconic advertising campaign hammered the “we’ll save you” message into the then Australian vernacular.
Over the next 20 years hundreds of billions of dollars of home loans, for millions of retail borrowers would be directed through the broker channel, as brokers presented the opportunity to “beat the banks”, find the home owner the best deal and to make it clear that lending included additional, high quality lending solutions for borrowers whom the banks locked out of home ownership. Never again would mortgage lending be the same.
