I am proud to share the news that this week we hit the milestone of 750 broker networks and firms having access to our mortgages.
We are comparatively new to the broker market, so it might be worth sharing some background on how we got to where we are.
The history of HSBC goes back to 1865, but it wasn’t until 1979, when many will have known us as the Midland Bank, that we first started offering mortgages in the UK.
Up until then it was predominantly the domain of regional building societies. The average house price was £17,000 and the Bank of England interest rate was 17%. It seems a world away from today.
The last forty years have seen seismic shifts in the housing market and financial services, and we have been at the forefront of pushing boundaries – we were the first provider to launch fixed rate mortgages in the UK.
We were also the first lender to offer a variable rate discount in addition to being one of the first to advertise on TV.
Historically, we focused wholly on ‘direct’ mortgages. In comparison to our market share in other areas of personal finance, we were extremely underweight when it came to mortgages with a very small share of the mortgage market. We had a great appetite to build on that and lend more.
A change in approach led us to dip our toes into the broker waters so we carried out a pilot with a major broker who helped us shape our offering, before piloting with one or two more and it worked well.
We were able to provide access to our mortgages via brokers to more customers across both purchase and remortgage products.
We slowly and methodically added broker firms to ensure we could handle the increased demand and provide the service that brokers want (for them and their customers) and deserve.
Our proportion of intermediary lending is now well in excess of 60% of our gross mortgage lending.
Our presence in the broker market is going from strength to strength, with a wide range of products (now including a comprehensive range of buy-to-let and product transfer deals) and a real commitment to high levels of service for brokers.
We are continuing to expand access to our mortgages, bringing on board new broker firms every week.
We added almost 350 broker firms to our panel last year and we are continuing to grow at pace in this space.
Intermediaries are extremely important to us and we know they value having access to our mortgages.
We will continue working hard to bring more broker firms on board and invest in providing the best possible products and service for them to offer their customers.
Chris Pearson is HSBC UK head of intermediary mortgages
