Brokers driving growth in big four volumes

Released yesterday, the mortgage aggregator’s January figures show the big four banks grabbed an additional 7.4 per cent of the home loan market last month.

Australia’s major banks and their subsidiaries now hold 74.9 per cent of all broker-originated loans.

AFG said that if reflected across all distribution channels, this would equate to an additional $2 billion market share in one month.

AFG’s monthly mortgage index shows that non-major lenders steadily increased their market share during the second half of 2014, from 25.3 per cent in July to a high of 32.5 per cent in December.

However, the fight-back by majors saw this share cut back to 25.1 per cent in January.

“We saw very high levels of competition during the second half of last year, with non-major lenders winning significant business, especially among borrowers looking to refinance,” AFG general manager of sales and operations Mark Hewitt said.

“But in a single month, majors have put non-majors back to where they were six months ago,” Mr Hewitt said.

“Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s rate decision, lenders of all sizes are having to compete aggressively for borrowers’ business,” he said.

The AFG mortgage index also shows the proportion of first home buyers, which plunged to an all-time low of just 6.9 per cent of all mortgages processed in December, moved upwards to 8.3 per cent in January.

While still well below the long-term trend of around 15 per cent, this figure was boosted by first home buyer figures rising from 1.7 per cent to 2.9 per cent in NSW, and 6.9 per cent to 9.6 per cent in Victoria.

Elsewhere, first home buyer proportions remained largely similar to previous months: 3.7 per cent in Queensland, 4.9 per cent in South Australia and 19.2 per cent in WA.