Majority of brokers expect big fall in sub-prime business

More than half of all brokers expect sub-prime business to fall by more than 10% due to product repricing, a survey commissioned by the Mortgage Business Expo has shown.

A further 65% said that they expected to lose more than one in ten sub-prime customers due to changes in application criteria as lenders’ reassess their risk exposure, it added.

Two thirds of the 2,000 brokers interviewed said that they would now have to deal with a wider range of companies in order to place business.

‘This state of affairs means brokers are already looking at lender and product alternatives in the marketplace,’ said director of the London mortgage expo Daniel Nwaokolo.

‘Indeed, 36% have already had sub-prime cases that would normally have been accepted declined in the last four weeks.

The survey was conducted at the beginning of September. Conditions in the sub-prime marketplace have since worsened as mortgage-backed securities trading has fallen.