Product pricing drives consumers to non-majors, Bendigo Bank leads BDM experience scores

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

Macquarie, ANZ and CBA dominate broker usage

Macquarie and ANZ are in a tug of war as the gap between the two most-used residential lending institutions narrows to 1% this month. Macquarie remains the most-used lender with 45% of brokers submitting deals through the lender. ANZ places second with a 44% market share, losing 1% over the last month. This demonstrates its enduring appeal of Macquarie to deliver reliable service and competitive turnaround times. CBA joins them at third with 37% broker usage, ahead of Westpac and NAB.

Among the non-majors, ING (23%) and St. George Banking Group (22%) consistently attracted strong broker interest, with their consistent service levels resonating with intermediaries. Firstmac (9%) led the charge among non-bank lenders, overtaking Pepper Money with an extremely narrow margin, as they provide a key option for brokers seeking flexible solutions for niche borrower needs.

‍Decision drivers

Client fit and product pricing lead lender selection

Client circumstances, together with product pricing remained the top factors influencing broker recommendations across all lender categories. For major banks, 76% of brokers cited client circumstances as a core driver, closely followed by product pricing (31%) and client preference lags significantly behind (14%).

For non-major ADIs, product pricing is the leading factor (62%), with a solid lead over client circumstances (56%). For non-banks, ‘client circumstances’ is the leading decision driver with a resounding 81%. Turnaround times continue to be a reason for choosing lenders in the case of majors and non-majors, less so for non-banks. This reflects the growing value brokers place on streamlined processes, particularly in a tight-lending and high-volume environment.

‍Turnaround times

Macquarie sets the pace, as some small ADIs struggle and non-ADIs rally turnaround times

Large ADIs

Macquarie Bank once again led the major banks with the fastest average turnaround at a speedy 1.5 business days, followed by Bendigo Bank (3.0 days), which demonstrated a solid improvement after only ranking 11th last month. Bankwest catches up at 3.2 days, joined by NAB with 3.2 days, and ME Bank’s slightly longer 3.4 days. 

Small ADIs

In the small ADIs category, UBank maintained its top spot despite an expanding processing time, now at 2.7 days, still making it a standout for brokers needing swift approvals. Heritage Bank also delivered an impressive performance at 3.0 days, slashing turnaround times by 8 days, overtaking 7 ADIs. It is the only small ADI to ramp up processing in September. Great Southern Bank closely follows at 3.9 days processing time, exhibiting consistent performance.  Newcastle Permanent continues to slow down as reports show 11-day turnaround times for this month, together with Teacher’s Mutual Bank at 12 days, and People’s Choice at 14.2 days. 

Non-ADIs

Among non-banks, Advantedge enjoyed another speedy month with 1.8 days reported turnaround time, keeping its top spot. Connective Home Loans followed suit at an average of 3.2 business days, improving from their previous month’s performance, while Bluestone Home Loans ranked 3rd at 3.8 days turnaround. With the exception of the top 2 fastest non-ADIs, the rest of the lenders in the same category demonstrated a narrow to somewhat considerable expansion in processing times, with Liberty Financial recording the most significant increase after its processing time stretched from 4 days in the past month to 6.8 days this month. La Trobe Financial maintains the longest processing time among small ADIs, after turnarounds averaged 9.9 days in September.

Broker experience

Macquarie,  Bank Australia, and Pepper Money win broker trust

Large ADIs

Macquarie Bank continues to provide the best broker experience with a three-month average broker experience rating of 95%. Bankwest follows behind closely at 92% broker experience rating. Suncorp, which currently ties with ING and NAB at 3rd place, demonstrated the strongest improvement in satisfaction rates, as numbers climbed from 85% in the past month to 88% in September. Meanwhile, AMP struggles as satisfied customers dip to 73%, a month-on-month decline of 4 percentage points.

Small ADIs

Bank Australia is now leading small ADIs in broker experience, with a 3-month average of 95% satisfaction, up by four percentage points since last month. Recently displaced Beyond Bank ranks second at 89%, while ubank and MyState closely follow, as both non-majors’ satisfaction ratings tie at 87%. Heritage Bank and People’s Choice are also seeing improvements in broker experience, as their numbers climb to 33% and 51%, respectively.

Non-ADIs

Pepper Money now leads non-ADIs in terms of broker experience ratings at 84%. Advantedge and recently displaced AFG Homeloans followed closely for overall satisfaction at 83% and 82%, respectively. Liberty Financial and Resimac join them in the top 5 with respective satisfaction rates of 79% and 78%. Besides Pepper Money, Resimac, and Connective Home Loans, all the other non-ADIs showed a decline in average ratings.

Broker insights on BDMs and credit teams

Bendigo Bank and Bankwest lead in both BDM and credit assessment performance

Bendigo Bank now ranked first for BDM experience, scoring a resounding 100% satisfaction rate. Macquarie slid down to 2nd place and tied with Suncorp at 93%, while ING closely followed at 93% BDM satisfaction rate. For less commonly used ADIs, Bank Australia and Heritage Bank received scores of 100% for BDM satisfaction, a strong recovery from Heritage, considering last month’s numbers, where 1 in 2 brokers expressed dissatisfaction over the lender’s BDMs. The two small ADIs are joined by Connective Home Loans from the non-bank space.

Bankwest now ranks first in terms of credit assessor performance, with a satisfaction rate of 93%. Macquarie skidded down to 2nd place, after losing two percentage points and reporting 91% satisfaction in September. NAB performed well taking the third place at 86%. For smaller banks, Beyond Bank and Heritage Bank both enjoyed 100% satisfaction scores this month. In the non-ADI segment, Connective Home Loans joins Resimac, as both achieve 100% credit assessor performance.

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‍About the report

In October 2025, Broker Pulse launched a new survey format, resulting in increased engagement. This new survey gathered responses from 306 residential brokers, collected between the 1st and 16th October 2025. 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 www.brokerpulse.com.au.