What brokers look for in a non-bank lender

MPA heard from hundreds of brokers on what they look for in a non-bank

Highly competitive, personalised and innovative, the non-bank sector is amongst the most exciting in the industry. Hundreds of brokers told MPA what they look for in a non-bank.

The results show that credit policy and supportive BDMs encourage brokers to consider the non-bank option, but turnaround times make the difference.

Respondents named three categories that most influence their choices: turnaround times, BDM support and credit policy. Turnaround times play a particularly interesting role – brokers cited them as less of a factor in their choice of a non-bank over a bank. But when we asked brokers which categories were most important to them overall, turnaround times came out on top.

What this indicates is that turnaround times could make the difference between one non-bank and another. Those non-banks that want to take market share from the banks, however, should emphasise their credit policy and BDM support, two factors that ranked highly in both overall importance and in persuading brokers to use non-banks.

There’s little differentiation between brokers’ secondary importance factors, which include product range, interest rates, online platforms and so on. Those non-banks that have attempted to compete on interest rates might be disappointed to hear that rates don’t seem to help non-banks compete either against banks, or against each other.

Interestingly, the overall importance scores for non-banks are very similar to the results of our Brokers on Banks survey. In fact, the top five categories are almost identical: turnaround times, BDM support, credit policy, product range and interest rates. (We removed the ‘overall service’ category for this survey.) As we found in Brokers on Banks, ’product diversification opportunities’ remains low on brokers’ agendas, which could indicate that the strength of the property market is giving brokers fewer reasons to push diversified products.




















































MPA's 2015 Brokers on Non-Banks proudly sponsored by Advantedge Distribution