Margin lending looks to have fallen by rather more than the decline in the value of the Australian equities market over the course of 2008, though the crook stock market may not have scared customers away.Estimates published yesterday by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank suggest that the aggregate of margin lending at present (or say as of the end of December 2008) was as little as $16 billion.That's a decline of almost 60 per cent over 12 months from a peak level of lending of $37.7 billion at the end of December 2007 (based on quarterly data compiled by the Reserve Bank of Australia).Margin lending is down by almost 50 per cent over the six months to the end of December 2008 and by more than 40 per cent over the final quarter of 2008.While margin lenders tend to assume a correlation between equity markets and demand, this relationship may have been exaggerated over the course of the great decline in equities over 2008. The All Ordinaries fell about 45 per cent over this period.Bendigo published an implied estimate for the size of the market in the course of a briefing on their purchase from Macquarie Bank of the latter's margin lending book.Bendigo said that its margin loan book, with the Macquarie purchase, was a combined $3.6 billion and the bank estimated its market share at around 23 per cent, only a little behind the market share of Westpac and compared with a Commonwealth Bank market share of 28 per cent.The scope of the decline is evident in Bendigo's own margin lending levels. At June 2007 the bank's Leveraged Equities unit (then owned by Adelaide Bank prior to the merger with Bendigo) had $5.1 billion in loans. At June 2008 it had $3.8 billion in loans and that's now down to $2.1 billion.Bendigo said that customer numbers, at around 17,000 for Leveraged Equities, remained stable.