Data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also showed that this was spread across 4,277 firms, while the reported number of mortgage broker posts saw a small increase from 36,211 to 36,441.
Broken down, there were 1,964 mortgage broker firms with 16,452 staff advising on mortgages, followed by 2,542 financial adviser firms that had 13,229 intermediaries. Some 81 banks and building societies had 4,430 staff advising on mortgages, 270 insurance intermediary firms had 1,803, while 113 other firms had 527.
Of the 1,964 firms, 999 had just one adviser, while 2,018 brokers were spread across 709 firms with two to five advisers. Some 225 firms made up of six to 50 advisers had 2,850 employees intermediating on mortgages, while 31 firms with over 50 advisers had 10,585.
Commission was the main source of revenue, accounting for 78 per cent of mortgage broking compared to 80 per cent in 2021.
Mortgage brokers earned £1.26bn in commission in total from all the business they conducted, with £868m of that coming from mortgage activity. Some £387m was commission earned from insurance business while £7.54m was generated from retail investment commission.
Some £267m of the money earned by mortgage brokers came from fees and charges attached to mortgage activity. The fees and charges paid to mortgage brokers for insurance earned them £1.22m, while retail investment generated £14m.
Mortgage broker PII
Mortgage broker firms paid a total of £22m in professional indemnity insurance (PII) premiums in 2022, which averaged £11,790 per firm, up from £9,590 in 2021. The average regulated revenue per firm came to £825,048 last year, with PII premiums accounting for 1.4 per cent of this. In 2021, each firm generated £754,990 in revenue on average, and spent 1.3 per cent of this on PII.
In 2022, the average PII premium for firms with less than £100,000 in revenue was the lowest at £1,611, this accounted for a greater share of their revenue than companies that generated more money.
This represented 4.1 per cent of the revenue generated by mortgage broker firms in this bracket. The average revenue and the share of PII was flat on the year before.
Firms with a revenue of more than £10m spent just 0.9 per cent of this on their PII premium, at an average of £429,397. This was slightly up on the £424,684 average in 2021 but still accounted for 0.9 per cent of revenue.
The average revenue generated by each top earning firm was £45.6m, while the bottom earning firms saw £40,117. Compared to 2021, the top earning firms saw a drop from £47.1m, while the lowest earning firms saw their revenue rise from £39,622.
