The next battlefield appears to be one of service, which has to be good news for both mortgage advisers and their clients.

Led by the likes of TSB, Coventry BS and Virgin, service standards and a corresponding respect for mortgage advisers has risen tangibly.

In the last week at First Complete, one adviser had three mortgages go from application to offer in just three hours. Go back even a few months and that would have been unheard of.

Such quick application to offer times are still the exception rather than the norm but it shows what can now be achieved with turnaround times dropping across the board. Of course the adviser has a role to play in this too by properly packaging cases for the lender, but lenders are also making it much easier for advisers to do business with them.

Technology is helping too. Many lenders are moving from faxed or posted documents to accepting ones that have been scanned and emailed; this helps prevent documents from getting lost and significantly speeds up the process.

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Lender apps that allow both the broker or the client to see where their case is also helps with understanding a mortgage case, while pledging either to return calls to mortgage advisers or get an offer out within a set time can only help the experience of borrowers while making advisers’ lives significantly easier.

There seemed to be a period, post MMR, when the message to consumers appeared to be that you could no longer get a mortgage. This has to have contributed to the drop in borrower numbers that the Council of Mortgage Lenders has reported.

Excellent service standards, will do a lot to turn this perception around and make it clear that mortgage lenders, are indeed, open for business.

Toni Smith is sales operations director at First Complete