At Legal and General’s Mortgage Club roadshow, the firm said it expected to see £235bn worth of lending go through the market this year, up from £220bn in 2015. However, it explained its 7% growth prediction was mostly due to house price inflation rather than increasing transactions.
Lloyds Banking Group and Metro Bank made similar predictions, at £234bn and £230bn, respectively.
However, Leeds Building Society was more conservative, with head of intermediary distribution Louisa Sedgwick estimating that the market will remain relatively flat this year, with £220bn to £226bn worth of mortgage deals likely to be completed.
Jeremy Duncombe, director at Legal and General Mortgage Club, warned brokers that to maintain their dominance of mortgage market share, they would need to revisit business models and embrace technology.
He said: “There’s a fundamental complacency in the market that if we’re not careful could take us down a route eventually leading to our own demise. If we as brokers continue to work as we have done over the last two to three years, waiting for business and customers to walk through our door we could end up in a position like Blockbuster and Kodak, who didn’t see the impact that market disruptors would have on them.
“But we don’t want to be that, we want to be the Netflix of the market and be agile. So if you stick with that model, good luck, you’ll probably be ok for the next 12-18 months but after that you could be in trouble.”
