Barclays has declared its commitment to the broker market in 2026 as it announces its intention to invest as “heavily” this year as it did in 2025.
Speaking at a roundtable event conducted at the Barclays office, Roland McCormack, UK head of intermediaries at Barclays, outlined the lender’s plan to support brokers in the upcoming year.
“What we want is when brokers are thinking about their customers, first-time buyers, movers etc, they’re looking to use us,” he stated.
To achieve this goal, McCormack highlighted three areas it will focus on over the next 12 months, namely simplification, technology, and product and segments.
To increase simplification, McCormack said Barclays would use its system to support brokers more effectively.
“Having the system’s great and it has brought us a long way but now it gives us a platform to start using data to be much more responsive to brokers,” he said.
“We’re not thinking about going from eight days to seven days, we’re thinking about a step change.”
McCormack reported Barclays would be extending its technology to product transfers.
In reference to product and segments, he said Barclays would continue to invest and innovate in all markets, with a particular emphasis on first-time buyers.
This focus on FTBs is due to their increased prominence in the future, stating “the next two or three years is going to be all about first-time buyers”.
McCormack also detailed that Barclays mortgage boost product, where buyers can use family income to support the purchase, will be enhanced in Q1.
Previous year
McCormack detailed the measures that Barclays implemented over 2025 to support its brokers, such as introducing a new system to streamline their work.
“We’ve gone from around 45/50 minutes for application time to about 15 minutes, and the record is now 3 minutes 15 seconds,” he said.
He attributed this speed to the system being “very intuitive” as it only presents questions to the broker that are actually relevant to the customer.
“It’s a real change in how we do things,” he said.
McCormack also stated that Barclays had been an “innovator” in terms of live chat, allowing for more responsiveness for both brokers and customers.
“Our average time to answer is three seconds and it gives the broker a recording of that conversation,” he recounted.
McCormack discussed Barclays investment in the high-value space, reporting that, for loans over £700,000, brokers can access the underwriter pre-application.
“This means they can talk to the decision maker and then that team will track that application all the way through end-to-end,” he said.
tom.dunstan@ft.com