Confidence among brokers held strong despite the results of June’s EU referendum, Shawbrook Bank’s broker barometer found.
Mortgage broker sentiment around lending remained bullish, it found, with 52 per cent of brokers remaining “fairly confident”.
Just a quarter of brokers described themselves as being “fairly concerned” about the UK’s lending environment, while more than a third said they remained confident about the prospect of business growth for the final quarter of 2016.
The barometer found 64 per cent of brokers had seen an increase in business volume and over two fifths had seen growing client demand in 2016 so far, compared with the second half of 2015.
Despite market uncertainty, the survey found more than a third (34 per cent) of brokers felt confident in the UK’s economy overall since the referendum.
Karen Bennett, Shawbrook’s managing director of commercial mortgages, said it was understandable brokers felt a little nervous about the market.
But she said: “It is encouraging to see a positive outlook in the main - particularly where client demand is concerned - and in spite of the challenges faced there is still much in the way of opportunity.”
“From a Shawbrook perspective, we are confident that those brokers and investors with a long term balanced strategy will continue to prosper as we move into a more settled environment, and we look forward to supporting them throughout the remainder of 2016.”
Research by Prudential has found more than half of financial advisers are expecting an increase in the number of clients seeking Brexit-related financial advice.
One adviser saw his enquiries double since the Bank of England lowered interest rates to a new historic low earlier earlier this month in the wake of the Brexit result.
But more than half of brokers felt the economic climate since the referendum will be challenging during the second half of 2016.
Despite many responding positively, one third of brokers (30 per cent) still feel uneasy with the post-Brexit financial climate - nearly one third believe the biggest consequence following the referendum result would be a fall in property prices and almost a quarter (23 per cent) expressed fears over a fall in investor demand.
Melinda Bush, director of Quartz Financial services said: “I haven’t seen any slowdown in business so far. After the shock people just seem to be getting on with their lives and are still acting on any decisions they would have made beforehand.
“There’s a danger of media frenzy, where a frenzy can bring about a downturn, so we need to avoid that and pull together.”
However Martin Stewart, director of London-based London Money said it was too early to tell whether brokers should be confident or not.
He said: “I wouldn’t read anything in to this. We’ve had nothing but success at the Olympics to take Brexit off the front pages.
“Lets see how the land lays once the tides gone back out in September and the grown ups are back at work.
“Someone somewhere is going to have to either invoke Article 50 or call a new referendum so lets have another barometer survey when that happens.”
