Brokers tighten their grip on Australia's home loan market as borrowers wear another RBA hike

With the Reserve Bank lifting the official cash rate for the third meeting in a row this week, more Australians than ever are skipping the major banks' branch counters and walking straight into a mortgage broker's office — a shift that industry data now shows is the dominant feature of the country's home-lending landscape.

The latest Quarterly Market Share figures published by the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) and compiled by data house Cotality show brokers facilitated 76.7 per cent of all new residential home loans settled in the December 2025 quarter, worth a record $142.20 billion in lending value. It is the strongest December-quarter result since the series began in 2013.

Although the December reading slipped slightly from the all-time peak of 77.6 per cent recorded in the June 2025 quarter, the underlying picture is one of structural change. Brokers have now written more than three quarters of every new home loan in Australia for five consecutive quarters — a milestone that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when the figure sat at around 53%–54%.

Why borrowers are switching

The reasons most often cited by industry researchers and consumer surveys come down to three things: choice, cost and complexity.

Walking into a single bank exposes a borrower to one product set, one credit policy and, by definition, one view of risk. A broker, by contrast, is paneled with dozens of lenders — typically the big four, the regional banks, customer-owned mutuals, non-bank lenders and a growing list of fintech entrants. For a household trying to refinance or buy a first home in a market where serviceability buffers remain tight, that breadth has become a meaningful advantage.

Australia's borrowing environment is now visibly more expensive than it was a year ago. The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.35 per cent on 5 May 2026 — its third consecutive hike — and the big four banks moved within days to pass the increase through to standard variable mortgage rates in full.

Against that backdrop, brokers say their phones have been ringing. Refinance enquiries typically spike in the days after a cash-rate decision, and the latest cycle has been no exception.

A regulated profession, not a sales channel

The broker channel's growth has not happened in a regulatory vacuum. Since 1 January 2021, mortgage brokers in Australia have been bound by a Best Interests Duty, a statutory obligation introduced in response to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, whose final report was delivered in early 2019.

The duty requires a broker to act in the best interests of the consumer when arranging credit, and to put the consumer's interests ahead of their own where there is any conflict. Branch staff at banks are not subject to the same statutory standard. They are obliged to follow responsible-lending laws and their employer's internal policies, but they are also paid to recommend their employer's own products.

That distinction has become a recurring talking point in the industry's marketing — and increasingly, a deciding factor for time-poor borrowers. ASIC has continued to update its guidance on the duty, including on conflicted remuneration practices such as cash-back offers and trail commissions. Brokers operate either under their own Australian Credit Licence or as authorised credit representatives, with aggregator groups layering on their own compliance frameworks.

A bigger workforce, a different shape

The broker workforce has grown alongside the market it serves. The MFAA reported its membership had crossed 16,000 brokers in July 2025, while industry-wide numbers tracked through ASIC's Connect register sat above 22,000 in early 2025. The profession has also become more diverse, with women accounting for a record share of new entrants, and a growing proportion of brokers operating as small-business owners rather than employees of bank-aligned franchises.

The makeup of the loans they write has shifted too. First-home buyers, self-employed borrowers and households navigating government schemes such as the Home Guarantee Scheme account for a rising share of broker volumes — segments that traditionally find a single lender's policies hard to fit.

What the banks are doing about it

The major banks have not stood still. Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, NAB and ANZ have invested heavily in proprietary digital channels, in-app pre-approval tools and same-day decisioning, with mixed results. Senior bank executives have at times been openly critical of the cost of broker-originated loans, citing commissions paid to aggregators; at other times the same chief executives have publicly defended the broker channel as essential to reaching customers in a competitive market.

For now, the data suggests borrowers are voting with their feet. Three out of every four new home loans written in Australia last quarter went through a broker, and with another rate hike now flowing through to repayments, that share is unlikely to retreat soon.

What it means for property buyers

For homebuyers and existing mortgage holders, the practical takeaway is straightforward: the broker channel has matured into the default route to a home loan in Australia. Most borrowers now receive a comparison of multiple lenders rather than the single product offered at a bank branch, and those who still walk in the front door of a major bank are, increasingly, the exception rather than the rule.

With money markets now pricing in the possibility of an RBA pause after three back-to-back hikes, the property sector is watching to see whether tighter conditions translate into a sharper pull-back in lending volumes. If recent history is any guide, the broker channel will continue to absorb the lion's share of any rebound — and the toughest pressure on the major banks will come not from regulators or the Reserve Bank, but from the 22,000-strong network of brokers now competing for their customers.