Macquarie tops key metrics in April, non-banks’ processing delays persist

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 continued improvements in turnarounds across small and large ADIs, 1-day processing speeds among top performers, and continued delays among non-bank lenders.

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Broker flows

ANZ leads broker usage with 50% of brokers submitting to the lender in April 

Half of active brokers submitted applications to ANZ (50%), making it the most-used lender in April. Macquarie has the highest broker usage among the non-major banks at 44%, and is the second most commonly used lender overall. Major banks round out the top five, with usage of 35% for CBA, 30% for Westpac, and 25% for NAB as they continue to dominate broker usage across the various lender types.

Among the non-majors, Bankwest had the second-largest broker usage at 19%, followed closely by St. George Banking Group (18%) and ING (17%). For non-bank lenders, Liberty Financial leads at 8%, followed by Firstmac (7%) and Resimac (5%).

Decision drivers

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

Seventy-seven percent of brokers recommend major banks, and 85% recommend non-banks, with the decision driven by how the lender’s services matched the circumstances of their clients. For majors, product pricing comes in second as a decision driver, with only 35% of brokers reporting citing this reason.
Non-bank recommendations are largely driven by product pricing, as cited by 63% of brokers over client circumstances (cited by 56%). For non-banks, only 10% of brokers cite product pricing as a primary reason for recommendation. 

Turnaround time

Large and small ADIs are seeing stabilising turnaround times, while those of non-bank lenders are now on a four-month streak of increasing processing times.

Large ADIs

After a busy final quarter in 2025, turnaround time for large ADIs continue to stabilise and now sits at 3.8 days in April.

Only 3 of the 12 large ADIs included in the survey, met or exceeded the overall average. 

Macquarie led the pack with an average time to initial credit decision of 1 business day, a strong improvement after an already impressive 2-day processing time in March. Meanwhile Bankwest and St. George both followed at 3 days each. 

Among the majors, CBA and Westpac took the shortest time to initial credit decision at 4 days, while ANZ and NAB were at the bottom half at roughly 5 days each.

Small ADIs

For small ADIs, average turnaround for April (5.7 days) was the shortest since the start of 2026. Unlike that of large banks, the spread of turnaround times appear more balanced within the segment. BCU topped the list at 1 day processing, followed by P&N Bank and ubank at 2 days each.

At 13 days, Newcastle Permanent’s processing time was more than twice longer than average. However, its current figure shows a strong improvement from last month’s 20-day turnaround time. 

Non-ADIs

At an average of 7.2 days, turnaround was longest among non-ADIs, but variance among lenders was also the lowest. Firstmac leads at 5 days, closely followed by Bluestone Home Loans and Pepper Money. Resimac, which ranked 2nd to the bottom, did not stray far from average at 8 days turnaround, while La Trobe Financial took last place with a turnaround of 13 days to initial credit decision.

Broker Experience‍

Broker experience ratings cover BDM performance alongside application, assessment, and settlement experience. As with processing speeds, ADIs outperformed non-bank lenders in this category.

Large ADIs

Macquarie had all their bases covered in April, with a beyond above-average turnaround speed, the large ADI also ranked 1st in terms of overall broker satisfaction with a rating of 96%. Bankwest ranked 2nd at 93% while ING ranked 3rd at 91%.

The majors ranked 6th to 9th out of the 12 large ADIs covered in the survey. NAB achieved a 3-month average rating of 87% while Westpac achieved 86%. At 8th and 9th place, CBA and ANZ received lower ratings of 81% and 80%, respectively.

Small ADIs

BCU led the small ADIs in terms of turnaround time, and also received the highest overall broker satisfaction rating (96%) within the segment.Bank Australia ranked second in broker satisfaction, sitting only 6 percentage points behind BCU at 90%.

Non-ADIs

Brokers reported relatively lower satisfaction ratings with non-bank lenders. AFG Home Loans received the highest satisfaction score of 88%, followed by Bluestone Homeloans at 86%, and Pepper Money at 83%.

Experience with credit assessors

Brokers base their credit assessor ratings on decision consistency and communication. Among the three lender segments, credit assessors of small ADIs received the highest rating.

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Large ADIs

Macquarie’s credit assessors received the highest rating among large ADIs at 90%. ING followed closely at 95%, while Bankwest sat at 3rd place with 90%. On the other end of the spectrum, large ADI ME Bank received the lowest credit assessor rating across all lender segments.

With the exception of NAB which ranked 5th at 85%, the majors’ credit assessors also ranked at the bottom half of the lender segment.

Small ADIs

BCU and P&N Bank’s credit assessors both received 100% broker satisfaction ratings, leading the non-bank lender segment by a significant margin. Bank Australia follows at 94% and ubank at 91%.

Non-ADIs

At 89%, Firstmac received the highest credit assessor rating among non-ADIs in April. Five of nine non-bank lenders included in the survey received a rating of 80% and above, while 8 of 9 received 75% or higher. RedZed, on the other hand, stood way behind its peers at 64%.

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