61% of First Complete mortgage and protection advisers feel more positive about the mortgage market than they did three months ago.
At the same time, 66% expect to write more business in the next three month than they are doing currently.
The results, from First Complete’s quarterly ‘adviser sentiment survey’, are in stark contrast to those of six months ago, when 29% of advisers said that they were feeling positive and 46% expected to write more business in the next three months.
However, clients are not feeling as upbeat as advisers, with only 34% saying that they are feeling more positive than three months ago and 59% feeling about the same. This compares favourably to six months ago when only 16% of people were feeling more positive.
There has been a significant shift in the areas that advisers expect to write the most business in over the next quarter. Last September, 42% of ARs expected their biggest growth area to be in protection, followed by 21% expecting to do most in buy-to-let. Now 38% of ARs expect the biggest growth area to be in purchase, up from just 14% last October. 34% still expect buy-to-let to do well, while just 12% of mortgage and protection advisers expect protection to be their biggest growth area.
When asked about the impact that Help to Buy would have on the mortgage market, advisers were divided with 47% feeling it would be a help, 38% felt that it wouldn’t be and 15% either unsure or of the believe that it would need some additional help.
Toni Smith, sales operations director of First Complete, said: “The percentage of advisers feeling positive about their businesses has more than doubled, while the numbers who expect to write more business over next three months has increased by 50%. In real terms the numbers who say they feel more positive has gone up almost fourfold.
“As the mortgage market has picked up over the last couple of months, there has been an interesting shift in the type of business that our ARs expect to write that we are already seeing evidence of, as mortgage business in some cases, starts to take priority over protection business. What we expect to see in the next month or two is an equivalent rise in protection cases which correspond with the rise in mortgage business.
“Only time will tell the success of the Help to Buy scheme, but it’s clearly something that divides opinion. However, if all it does is increase consumer confidence that has to be a good thing and it will be interesting to monitor how consumer sentiment has changed three months from now.”
