Bankwest tops in BDMs experience, Macquarie leads in turnaround times, credit assessor, and broker experience

The latest Broker Pulse: Residential Lending report by Agile Market Intelligence reveals insights from our monthly survey of Australia’s mortgage brokers and highlights the key lender movements across usage, service, loan processing times, and broker experience. 

Broker flows

Majors continue to dominate broker usage, with ANZ as the most-used bank for 48% of brokers

Nearly half of the broker population has submitted deals to ANZ (48%).  Macquarie has the highest broker usage among the non-major banks at 46%, and is the second most commonly used lender overall. Major banks round out the top five, with ratings of 35% for CBA, 34% for Westpac, and 31% for NAB. These numbers reveal that the majors maintained the strongest broker usage across the various lender types in February 2026.

Among the non-majors, St. George Banking Group attracted the second-strongest broker usage at 24%, followed by Bankwest at 21%. As for non-bank lenders, Firstmac leads with a broker usage of 11%. Pepper Money, La Trobe Financial, and Liberty Financial all follow suit with a broker usage of 7%. 

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Decision drivers

Brokers cite client circumstances as the leading factor for major and non-banks; product pricing leads for non-major banks

Seventy-four percent of brokers recommend major banks, and 84% recommend non-banks, primarily due to how the lender’s services matched the circumstances of their clients. Following the same pattern, brokers cited product pricing as the second-highest reason for choosing a lender (37% for major banks, and 8% for non-banks). In the case of non-banks, more brokers set their sights on client circumstances instead of product pricing. 

For non-major banks, product pricing remains the main criteria for brokers (63%) citing a 2 percentage point increase from last month. Fewer brokers are prioritising client circumstances, with a decrease from 59% to 57% in the last month.

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Turnaround times

Lenders Macquarie, ubank, and AFG Home Loans lead with the shortest turnaround time

Large ADIs

Following the trend from last month, most of the large ADIs reported shorter turnaround times in February compared to January 2026. Macquarie remains the top lender with the shortest turnaround time, only taking up 1.4 business days. This mid-tier is followed by Bankwest with an average turnaround time of 3.2 business days. Among the major banks, Westpac leads the pack with a turnaround time of 3.3 days. Even the ADI bank with the slowest turnaround time, NAB, has shown a faster turnaround time of 4.7 days.

Small ADIs

In the small ADIs category, ubank had the shortest turnaround time of 3.5 business days, slower compared to its turnaround of 2.7 days in the previous month. HSBC and BCU follow in second and third place, taking around 4 and 4.2 business days. Respectively. Interestingly, HSBC is also the only lender to have improved its turnaround time among the small ADIs. Rounding out at fourth place is MyState with a processing time of 4.9 days. 

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Non-ADIs

AFG Home Loans leads the non-ADIs with the quickest turnaround time of 4.2 days, and is the only lender to have improved its processing time. The rest, by comparison, have extended turnaround times in the past month. Following close behind is Pepper Money, taking up 4.3 days. La Trobe Financial has the slowest turnaround time of 7.8 business days. 

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Broker experience

Macquarie, P&N Bank, and AFG Home Loans are cited with highest broker satisfaction experience

Large ADIs

Among the large ADIs, Macquarie remains the top lender serving excellent broker experience for 96%. Bankwest follows with a 92% rating, rounded out by ING with a score of 90%. As for the major banks, NAB has the highest satisfaction rating of 86%. CBA and Westpac both follow with a score of 84%, and ANZ lands last at 80%. 

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Small ADIs

P&N occupies the top spot among small ADIs with a satisfaction rating of 92% among brokers. MyState and ubank both follow with the same score of 88%. Rounding out the rest of the top spots are Beyond Bank, Great Southern Bank, and Bank Australia, with a shared satisfaction rating of 87%.

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‍Non-ADIs

Among non-ADIs, AFG Home Loans provided the most positive broker experience with a rating of 95%. RedZed follows second with a score of 91%, rounded out by Advantedge with a score of 86% to complete the top three ranks. 

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Broker insights on BDMs and credit teams

Bankwest leads for BDMs, while Macquarie tops for credit assessor experience

Experiences with BDMs

In terms of broker experience with lender BDMs, Bankwest ranked the highest positive rating at 97%. Macquarie and ING follow suit with a shared score of 94%. These mid-tiers scored higher compared to the major banks, with the highest being NAB with a score of 82%.

Among less commonly used ADIs, Auswide, BCU, and P&N all scored 100% in February. Coming up after these ADIs is ubank with a score of 95%. As for the commonly used non-ADIs, Advantedge, AFG Home Loans, and Bluestone Home Loans all scored a resounding 100%. Following in their footsteps were La Trobe Financial and RedZed with a shared score of 92%.

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Experiences with credit assessors

Macquarie is ranked first with a 95% satisfaction rating for credit assessment experience among the most commonly used ADIs. Bankwest follows close behind with a score of 93%, with ING rounding out at third place with a 91% rating.

Among the less commonly used ADIs, BCU and Beyond Bank both scored a resounding 100%. Bank Australia follows behind with a satisfaction rating of 90%. As for the commonly used non-ADIs, AFG Home Loans tops with a score of 93%. Rounding out second and third place are RedZed and Bluestone Home Loans with scores of 83% and 80%, respectively.

About the report

This Broker Pulse survey gathered responses from 331 residential brokers, collected between the 1st and 16th of March 2026. Brokers were asked to share their experiences with the lenders they worked with throughout September, rating them across turnaround time, credit assessment, BDM interactions, and the overall broker journey. 

About Broker Pulse: Residential Lending

Broker Pulse is a monthly survey of residential mortgage lenders conducted by Agile Market Intelligence. It is a community-driven knowledge base of lender performance that offers transparency to the market by surfacing these collective insights from the broker community. This empowers brokers to make informed decisions and enables lenders to benchmark and improve performance.

Participating brokers receive access to a bird’s-eye view of the lender benchmarking data each month. To sign up or for more information visit https://www.brokerpulse.com.au/.