Announcing its results for the first half of the year, MAB reported that its share had increased from the six per cent registered in the first six months of 2021.
The broker revealed that its adviser numbers have increased by eight per cent over the period to 2,034, while its mainstream adviser numbers had jumped by 19 per cent to 1,890. However, the revenue per mainstream adviser dropped by 13 per cent compared to the corresponding period in 2021.
MAB said this was down to pipelines taking longer to convert compared to last year, while the stamp duty holiday had also accelerated house purchase mortgage completions.
The firm said that there were a number of factors delaying property transactions and mortgage pipelines, such as conveyancing backlogs, local authority capacity constraints and expiring mortgage offers needing to be reissued by lenders due to frequent base rate rises.
Overall gross mortgage completions at MAB, including product transfers, grew by 11 per cent to £12.2bn from £11bn, while gross new mortgage completions excluding product transfers rose by seven per cent to £10.3bn from £9.6bn.
During the period, MAB completed its acquisition of the Fluent Money Group, which it said would be “transformational” for its lead generation strategy, while it has also increased its stake in protection advice firm Vita Financial from 49 per cent to 75 per cent.
As a result, its total number of advisers on 23 September stood at 2,160. This includes 156 advisers from Fluent Money.
Cooling demand
In its statement, MAB noted that demand from borrowers has “cooled a little”, though suggested that transaction levels will “remain steady”.
It said: “In this increasing interest rate environment, advisers have experienced constant change in mortgage products as well as short notice withdrawal of those products, and we expect this to continue whilst interest rate uncertainty continues.”
Peter Brodnicki (pictured), chief executive at MAB, said that the results were impressive given the “increasingly difficult macro environment”, and emphasised the firm’s market share gain.
He continued: “The integration of Fluent is progressing very well. Lead flow has been growing strongly, ahead of our expectations, and we expect it to continue to do so despite the purchase market starting to slow. Accordingly, recruiting new advisers to ensure this strong consumer demand is met remains a high priority for Fluent.”
Brodnicki added that MAB’s pipeline of new appointed representatives (AR) and adviser recruitment was strong, stating that it wanted to continue to add firms focusing on achieving growth.
He added that due to longer completion timeframes it started the second half of the year with a pipeline of written business that was 30 per cent higher than expected.
“A continuation of slow pipeline conversion, a further softening of purchase activity, and an increasingly cautious approach to recruitment by some ARs is likely to lead to a slight reduction in the group’s financial result for the year against previous expectations,” Brodnicki said.
