Most brokers are small players

John Kavanagh
The picture of the mortgage broker market that emerges from data presented with news site The Adviser's annual brokerage rankings is of an industry where a handful of brokers have loan books worth many billions of dollars, while a great many more have portfolios hovering around the billion dollar mark.

The Adviser has rated Aussie Home Loans Australia's top mortgage broker.

Aussie brokers wrote 44,935 loans of new loans worth A$14.6 billion last year. The loan book grew $5.7 billion to $54.9 billion. Aussie added 29 brokers, taking the total to 889.

Rankings are based on a number of performance measures, including the size of loan books, loan growth and average broker volume.

Mortgage Choice was ranked number two, with the second largest loan book at $47.1 billion. The company added 27 brokers, taking the total to 534.

Third-ranked Smartline Personal Mortgage Advisers has 271 brokers and $21.9 billion of loans. It wrote 20,291 loans worth $5.5 billion last year.

Loan Market, which has 467 brokers, has a loan book worth $23.3 billion.

From there it is a big drop to LJ Hooker Home loans with the fifth biggest broker loan book at $5.1 billion and 85 brokers, according to The Adviser.

And from there it is another big drop to the rest of pack, where average book size is around $1 billion to $2 billion.