Coventry Building Society, is the most recommended medium or large building society by brokers, according to research by broker forum, cherryplc.co.uk.
Some 43% of survey participants said they would recommend the Coventry Building Society to clients most often, with 20% saying they recommend Nationwide and 16% saying they recommend Skipton Building Society.
When it comes to smaller building societies, participating brokers said they use them for a range of different types of cases.
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The most popular was adverse credit, which was cited by 15.8% of brokers, while 14.9% said they used smaller building societies for self-employed and contractors.
A further 12.4% use them for joint borrower, sole proprietor (JBSP) and 11.5% for later life lending. Other types of cases named by brokers included holiday lets and second homes, interest-only, non-standard construction, self-build, guarantor, and professionals.
More than four in 10 brokers (43.8%) said they expect to see their business with building societies grow in 2021, with just over half anticipating it to be about the same. Just 2.5% said they expect to do less business with building societies this year.
Donna Hopton, director at cherry, said: “Whether they are small, medium or large, building societies enable brokers to find solutions for their difficult-to-place cases and they continue to be very popular with intermediaries.
“With so many building societies to choose from and each having its own particular areas of expertise, it can be a difficult landscape to navigate.
“However, on the cherryplc.co.uk broker forum we see lots of brokers discussing cases and giving each other tips about the best lenders to use in different circumstances.
“It’s a useful sounding board for brokers to get an initial idea of their options before conducting more thorough research.”
Jonathan Stinton, head of intermediary relationships at Coventry Building Society, added: “We’ve worked extremely hard to support brokers and their clients through the challenges of the last year and a half.
“We’ve introduced a new way of getting in touch with us via our web chat tool, continued to evolve our lending policy where we can and offered competitive products in the Residential and Buy to Let markets.
“We’ll continue to strive to improve and look for new ways to provide the best products and service we can to brokers and their clients.”