Masthaven Bank’s latest Broker Beat report has found that 73% of intermediaries working in the specialist sector feel confident about the prospects for the mortgage market, with 89% confident about their own company’s prospects over the next 12 months. These figures show an increase of 12% and 5% respectively from the previous year.

This is the second iteration of Masthaven’s Broker Beat survey, which collates responses from brokers and is intended to gauge insight and opinions of intermediaries working in the specialist lending market.

27% of specialist brokers expect their topline revenue to increase by 10%-20% in the next 12 months and over 35% expect the majority of this additional work to come from direct marketing and business activity.

Masthaven said confidence among brokers appears to stem in part from the fact they can serve a wide range of potential customers. When asked what customer types brokers expect to see more business from in the next 12 months,47% of respondents cited specialist finance. 19% expect to see more business from later life borrowers, followed by first-time buyers (14%).

In terms of what intermediaries think matters most to customers when taking out a loan, 41% said low rates, followed by flexible criteria (30%) and speed (12%).

Customer service didn’t feature as a top statistic this year compared to 20% of intermediaries that cited it as a differentiator last year. However, Masthaven said this could be because brokers have now come to expect quality service for them and their customers, rather than it becoming a less important deciding factor. Lending criteria (28%) and the impact of regulation (14%) are both cited by intermediaries as being growth challenges in the market.

23% of intermediaries said remortgaging is experiencing the most growth. This was closely followed by later life lending (20%) and short-term finance (13%). 19% believe property development needs the most innovation in order to meet growing customer demand, alongside later life lending (18%) and buy-to-let products (15%).

Jon Hall, managing director of Masthaven, said: “Despite the ongoing uncertainty facing the UK economy, nothing, it seems, can compete with the resilience or dampen the confidence of specialist mortgage brokers. Instead, Masthaven’s second Broker Beat survey shows brokers’ confidence about the prospects for their own businesses and for the specialist mortgage market as a whole have actually increased over the past year.

“At Masthaven, we offer the broadest range of property related lending products on the market and intend to add to this further throughout the year so that intermediaries feel even better equipped with an array of solutions that can be tailored to their customers’ needs.”

Matt Andrews, managing director of mortgages at Masthaven, said: “Any good product comes from solving customer needs and at Masthaven we take this to the next level, developing products that can be both personalised and tailored dependent on your customer’s requirements. Recognising that people don’t fit into pre-determined silos and taking customer feedback on board is what drives the increasing flexibility of products and criteria, alongside an ongoing commitment to underwriting complex cases that we are seeing across the market.”

Hall added: “The positive noises from brokers are pleasing to hear, as is the diverse areas of growth identified in the report including remortgaging, later life lending and the short-term markets. Intermediaries want access to a range of lending solutions – both long and short-term – and should ensure that these are all options available as part of their broker toolkit.

“Property development, later life lending and the buy-to-let markets are all areas identified as needing the most innovation to grow – and Masthaven is innovating in each of these markets. The future looks bright – specialist lending intermediaries see no shortage of promising opportunities; and as lenders we should support this over the months and years ahead.”