Building Societies in 2020: Banking on broker satisfaction?

So far 2020 has been a year full of change for many of us. And while the day job for the UK’s building societies has become a little more difficult, the fundamentals remain reassuringly constant.

Building societies aim to provide a safe place for savings and to make a return on these deposits by lending money via mortgages. With mortgage brokers critical to the distribution strategies of building societies, we set out to find out whether the broker experience of using building societies was any different to other types of mortgage lenders, be it banks, specialist or lifetime lenders.

Are building societies delivering a better broker experience, and if so, what’s behind this?

There are of course significant differences between building societies. And for the first time we’ve grouped all building societies into three peer groups, based on asset size. How does the feedback for larger peer group 1 building societies compare with peer group 3 building societies?

We’ve summarised our findings in a short summary report, ‘Building Societies in 2020: Banking on broker satisfaction?’  which can be accessed here.

Summary Findings

• Broker satisfaction with building societies in the first half of 2020 stands at 85.9%, some 3.4% higher than banks and 10.3% higher than specialist lenders
• When brokers were asked to tell us what they like about a lender and/or what could be better, customer service and underwriting attracted some 21% of broker feedback about building societies, and the sentiment behind these two themes is overwhelmingly positive
• Peer group 1 building societies have a clear advantage around product and lending themes, e.g. product range and criteria
• Peer group 2 building societies are viewed as the most flexible group of lenders
• Excellent customer service and underwriting account for some 39% of all broker feedback focused on peer group 3 lenders
• Slow service and poor online systems have the biggest downward pull on the NPS of building societies

The summary report ‘Building Societies in 2020: Banking on broker satisfaction?’ can be accessed here.

To discuss this summary report further, please contact the team at Smart Money People.