Survey indicates more advisors using specialist lenders

March 18, 2025 by Brendan O'Neill

Surveys and Statistics

An increasing number of mortgage advisors are looking to the specialist lending market for solutions to their more complex cases, which is causing many major lenders to fall behind.

This is the finding of new research that has been conducted by Butterfield Mortgages. The lender surveyed a total of 300 mortgage advisors based across the UK for its study. The results show that over six out of every 10 of them are now using specialist mortgage lenders for those kinds of cases. This could have serious consequences for many of the high street lenders.

The advisors who took part in the survey cited a number of different kinds of cases where specialist lenders had proven useful. Among them were applications on behalf of clients who were buying unique properties, applications for high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and applications for people who are not based in the UK.

In total, 61% of the advisors surveyed said that they used specialist lenders when they were unable to place a client with a mainstream one.

Alpa Bhakta from Butterfield Mortgages told Mortgage Introducer that the primary reason for this was the restrictive lending criteria typically applied by the big lenders. She then went on to add that:

“Specialist lenders are ready and appropriately placed to fill this gap – something which is reflected in the increasing number of brokers using alternative options to high-street banks.”

This suggests the specialist market is going to become much more important for those with CeMAP mortgage advisor training, unless mainstream lenders start to loosen their criteria.