The Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB) saw profits increase as its arranged mortgage lending grew in the first half of 2018 despite a challenging house purchase market.
In its interim results released today (25 September), MAB announced an increase in revenue in the first six months of the year to £57.9m - up 17 per cent on £49.6m in 2017 - and a growth of 11 per cent in pre-tax profits to £7m, from £6.3m the previous year.
The amount of gross mortgage lending - including product transfers - arranged by the firm grew by 25 per cent to £6.5bn while its market share of new mortgage lending also rose by 12 per cent to 4.7 per cent.
Peter Brodnicki, chief executive of MAB, said this growth had been achieved in a weaker house purchase market where the number of transactions fell by 5 per cent.
He said: "Although one or two segments of mortgage lending have risen slightly, overall housing transactions have reduced, with our first half results representing a clear outperformance against the housing market."
Despite growth on the mortgage side of the business, MAB saw protection sales "pegged back" because of the fall in house purchase mortgages and the rise in remortgaging and product transfers.
This led to a squeeze on the company's gross profit margin in the first six months of 2018, sitting at 22.5 per cent compared to 24.1 per cent in the same period last year.
Since the end of last year, the firm has gained 60 advisers and Ben Thompson, previously chief executive at ULS Technology, was appointed managing director in June.
Mr Brodnicki said MAB is half-way through its three-year plan, on which he believes good progress was being made with technology becoming "central and integral" to the business model.
He said: "We are now in the build phase of our new fintech developments, which are aimed at giving us an agile technology platform, that will provide our advisers with increased and improved interaction with mortgage customers, and, most importantly, ensuring that those customers receive an even better mortgage and home-moving or re-mortgaging experience."
rachel.addison@ft.com
