Macquarie leads in broker flows, turnaround times, BDMs, 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. Some of the important insights this month include the improvements of certain lender performances, such as the quick turnaround time of Advantedge, which hastened its overall processing period by at least two days. 

Broker flows

Macquarie tops broker usage with major banks trailing behind 

Macquarie garnered the most applications in March (45%), dominating every other lender across the board. This non-major bank is followed closely by the major bank ANZ (44%), then by CBA (37%), Westpac (34%), and NAB (29%). While Macquarie clearly leads the pack for the month of March, the majors still dominate the board in terms of broker usage. 

Non-major banks, St. George Banking Group (23%) and Bankwest (21%) round out as the second and third top in the list. As for non-bank lenders, Liberty Financial was the most used non-bank lender in March, ranking at an 8% broker usage overall. La Trobe Financial and Firstmac followed suit with broker usage of 7%. 

Decision drivers

Client circumstances and product pricing are driving factors for major and non-major lender recommendations

For major banks, 79% of brokers recommended lenders based on client circumstances, whereas 40% would do the same based on product pricing. These are the two main factors in considering lenders in the past three months, which are the same for brokers who approached non-major banks (56% for both product pricing and client circumstances). 

In the case of non-banks, client circumstance has remained the primary reason for considering a lender for 84% of brokers. Interestingly, however, there has been a slight uptick for other factors, namely product pricing (11%), turnaround time (4%), and client preference (6%).

Turnaround times

Lenders Macquarie, ubank, and Advantedge lead with the shortest turnaround time

Large ADIs

Macquarie leads with the shortest turnaround time of 1.6 business days. This mid-tier bank is followed by Bankwest and St. George Banking Group, with an average turnaround time of 3.1 and 3.3 business days, respectively. NAB has the fastest turnaround among the major banks of 4 days, shorter than the previous month of 4.7 days.

Small ADIs

In the small ADIs category, Advantedge had the shortest turnaround time of 2 business days, much shorter than its 4.8-day performance last month. Advantedge is the sole lender to have significantly shortened its initial credit decision in comparison to its competitors, while only a select few others have marginally shortened their turnaround times. Some lenders that have shortened their turnaround times include Connective Home Loans (6.2 days) and Liberty Financial (5.4 days), while others have extended theirs such as La Trobe Financial (13 days).

Non-ADIs

Quite a number of non-ADIs have improved their processing times in March 2026 in comparison to their performances last February. ubank leads the non-ADIs with the quickest turnaround time of 2.8 days. Great Southern Bank follows second with a processing time of 4.2 days, with P&N Bank coming up close behind at 5.2 days. Even the lender with slowest turnaround time, Newcastle Permanent, improved its performance initially taking up 20.1 days in February 2026 to 19.5 days in March 2026. 

Broker experience

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

Large ADIs

Among the large ADIs, Macquarie remains the top lender serving excellent broker experience for 96% of brokers. Bankwest and ING both follow with a 91% rating, rounded out by St. George Banking Group with a score of 88%. As for the major banks, NAB and Westpac both share the highest satisfaction rating of 85%. 

Small ADIs

P&N occupies the top spot among small ADIs with a satisfaction rating of 92%. Beyond Bank follows with a score of 89%, trailed closely behind by Auswide with a rating of 88% and Great Southern Bank with 87%. Rounding out the rest of the top spots are Bank Australia and ubank with a shared score of 86%. 

Non-ADIs

Among non-ADIs, AFG Home Loans provided the most positive broker experience with a rating of 89%. Connective Home Loans follows second with a score of 87%, rounded out by RedZed and Bluestone Home Loans with a share score of 86% to complete the top ranks. 

Broker insights on BDMs and credit teams

Macquarie and Great Southern Bank leads in BDMs experience, Connective Home Loans tops in credit assessor experience

Experiences with BDMs

In terms of broker experience with lender BDMs, Macquarie Bank ranked the highest positive rating at 95%. Bankwest and Bendigo Bank follow suit with scores of 88% and 87%, respectively. These mid-tiers scored higher compared to the major banks, with the highest being Westpac with a score of 80%.

Among less commonly used ADIs, Great Southern Bank scored the highest in February (95%). Coming up after these ADIs is People’s Choice with a score of 94%, and Beyond Bank with 86%. As for the commonly used non-ADIs, Resimac scored the highest at 94%, followed by RedZed at 92%, and Connective Home Loans at 89%. 

Experiences with credit assessors

Macquarie and Suncorp both ranked the highest satisfaction rating (94%) among the most commonly used ADIs for credit assessment experience. ING follows close behind with a score of 92%, with Bankwest rounding out at fourth place with a score of 89%. 

Among the less commonly used ADIs, ubank scored the highest rating of 94%, followed by Great Southern Bank (90%). They’re followed by Beyond Bank and Bank Australia with scores of 86% and 85%, respectively. Connective Home Loans is uniquely the only lender to have scored a resounding 100% across the board, and is effectively the highest across the most commonly used non-ADIs. Rounding out at second and third place are AFG Home Loans and Liberty Financial with scores of 93% and 84%, respectively. 

About the report

This Broker Pulse survey gathered responses from 321 residential brokers, collected between the 1st and 16th of April 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/.

‍