Shawbrook Bank has published its Service Level Agreement (SLA) metrics for September, showing an improvement in its figures.

Last month the lender saw a broad improvement in turnaround times, which it believes is notable given the larger volume of post items worked compared to August: 4,605 compared to 4,067.

It saw a significant increase in term loan post from 2,937 to 3,486 items, with 88.7% of short-term loans being processed within four hours. Despite growth in the number of term application post items, the number processed within 72 hours was 97.7%.

Its valuation figures were as follows:

Business Valuations: 8.33 days (Aug – 12.20 days)
Commercial Valuations: 10.80 days (Aug – 10.84 days)
Residential Valuations: 5.87 days (Aug – 7.68 days)
STL Commercial Valuations: 8.04 days (Aug – 7.42 days)
STL Residential Valuations: 4.00 days (Aug – 4.65 days)
STL Refurbishment Valuations: 4.64 days (Aug – 5.33 days)

In September, the short-term loan team within Pure Law demonstrated improved performance with an additional 22% of cases turned around within the 10-day period (now accounting for over a third (32%) of cases).

The term refinances continued to vary in speed depending on whether or not the client chose to waive solicitor representation – an offering now available for both individuals and limited companies on all refinances up to £1m.

Since August there has been the elimination of all cases using the non-rep option taking longer than 91 days, with only 5% taking longer than 60 days. 65% of non-representation instruction completed in 30 days, compared to 29% with representation.

Karen Bennett (pictured), sales and marketing director, commercial mortgages at Shawbrook Bank, said: “We value transparency highly and believe making these figures public helps brokers to see clearly how our processes are working.

“We’re pleased that we achieved the desired improvement in our figures over the last month, particularly given the additional 500 items of post the team processed in September, and we remain committed to improving our service offering further.”