The mortgage broking sector has picked up market share this year after a dip in 2020, according to a Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia report on the industry.

MFAA’s latest Industry Intelligence Service report, prepared by CoreLogic, shows brokers accounting for 57.5 per cent of all new home loan settlements in the March quarter – up from 52.1 per cent in the March quarter last year.

Share is still below the peak of 59.7 per cent recorded in the March quarter 2019.

Broker-originated mortgage settlements of A$122.8 billion over the six months to March were up 24.4 per cent over the previous corresponding period. The total value of brokers’ mortgage books grew 6.3 per cent year-on-year to $766.9 billion.

Brokers’ conversion rates also improved. The proportion of broker-originated home loans settled as a proportion of applications lodged during the six months to March was 72.2 per cent – up from 68.7 per cent in the previous corresponding period.

The sector is expanding, with the number of brokers in the industry growing from 16,490 in the September quarter last year to 16,968 in the March quarter this year. However, broker numbers are below their peak of 17,040 in 2018.

The average broker settled $7.2 million of loans over the six months to March and earned $161,894 – made up of $94,000 of up-front commissions and $68,000 of trail commissions.

The MFAA said mortgage brokers are increasingly moving into commercial finance broking, with the number writing commercial and equipment loans rising from 4539 last October to 4727 in March – 27.9 per cent of the total broker population.

The value of new settled broker-originated commercial loans during the six months was $10.3 billion, compared with $122.8 billion of residential mortgages.