Non-major lenders dominated the home loan market in January and notched up the highest proportion of home loans since the global financial crisis (GFC), mortgage broker AFG revealed.
The broker’s Competition Index showed non-major lenders wrote 41.4 per cent of all new refinancing loans in December, while their share of refinancing loans rose from 28.4 per cent in January 2014 to 41.4 per cent by December.
This puts non-major lenders’ share of processed mortgages to an all-time high of 32.3 per cent in December.
Suncorp was the best performer, with 9.7 per cent of all new home loans in December while Macquarie made up 5.4 per cent, and ING made up 3.7 per cent.
General manager of sales and operations Mark Hewitt expects competition to rev up this year as some expect a slowdown in market growth.
“In particular I am expecting the majors to hit back hard in the next quarter,” he said.
Among the major lenders, 16.3 per cent of loans processed in December were for ANZ, 14.8 per cent for the Commonwealth Bank and 12.8 per cent for Westpac.
The major lenders still made up 73.3 per cent of all new investors, although this was down from the 80.3 per cent they held in January 2014.
