Stonebridge has revealed a continuation of its recent record monthly lending volumes, having processed over £1bn worth of mortgage applications during September.
The network’s member firms placed over 5,600 lending applications in September, which is a 19% yearly increase.
At the end of August, its year-to-date lending volumes were up 7% on the same period in 2019.
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By the end of September, Stonebridge’s total adviser headcount had risen to 733, with 13 new starters recruited by existing AR firms using Stonebridge’s recruitment team.
Stonebridge anticipates that recruitment will continue at the same pace, with over 150 applications at the end of September either pending authorisation, onboarding, or in the initial application process.
Stonebridge also gave an update on the continued investment it is making into its trading platform Revolution, with further development work taking place on its multi-phase restyling project.
Rob Clifford, chief executive of Stonebridge, said: “We’re very pleased to see a continuance of our AR firms’ excellent mortgage and protection results which have been progressing well ahead of forecast, since the first lockdown was eased back in May.
“Mortgage application numbers are performing particularly strongly, and our completion levels continue to grow every week.
“In that sense, it has been an excellent recovery and we anticipate this will continue to strengthen particularly over the next two quarters.
“The ongoing support we are able to offer firms extends into proactively helping them to recruit more advisers in order to meet demand and their own firm’s growth ambitions, and again we have seen excellent levels of organic growth within firms, with the majority of new Stonebridge advisers joining our existing members.
“Market growth is currently accelerating the recruitment success of our members, however, our recruitment and business support teams are able to help them with their short-, medium- and long-term plans, plus how they get the best advisers and what they should be considering when looking at increasing the size and shape of their business.
“We’ll continue to support those firms who wish to grow in this way and to outline and provide a range of opportunities – mortgage, protection and GI – which are available to them through Stonebridge.”