Increased business levels as well as growing confidence in providing advice following the Mortgage Market Review are largely attributable for the rise in the positive outlook, the latest Halifax confidence tracker showed.
Some 88% of brokers expressed confidence in the outlook of the intermediary sector in Q4 compared to 86% in the previous quarter and 76% in Q2.
Figures are now closer to record high levels seen in quarter one of 2014 when confidence in the outlook the intermediary sector, the mortgage market and success in the outlook of their own firms were 100%, 95% and 100% respectively.
Broker confidence in their own firms reached 97% in Q4, a 1% increase on Q3 2014 and a 3% rise on the same quarter in 2013. The tracker also showed that brokers had an increasingly positive outlook towards the mortgage market in general, with 88% expressing confidence in Q4, jumping from 74% in Q3 2014.
Halifax said the reason brokers that felt ‘fairly’ confident rather than ‘very’ confident was partly due to to growth projections forecasting the first interest rate rise towards the end of 2015.
Ian Wilson, head of Halifax Intermediaries, said: “The economic recovery helped boost employment and wages, and this in turn boosted consumer confidence which encouraged greater activity in the mortgage market.
“With an increase in business levels in the intermediary sector, broker confidence in the advice market and, crucially, their own business is moving closer to the highs we saw prior to the introduction of MMR regulations in 2014.”
