Halifax has once again been named the best overall lender for broker experience in Smart Money People’s latest Mortgage Lender Benchmark.
The lender retained its position as the highest-rated mainstream lender and repeated its success as the best overall lender for broker experience in the H1 2026 edition of the industry survey.
The latest Mortgage Lender Benchmark found that overall satisfaction with mortgage lenders remained largely stable during the first half of the year, with an average score of 4.22 out of five, compared with 4.25 in H2 2025.
The building society sector recorded the highest Broker Experience Index score at 73.6, overtaking mainstream lenders, which scored 70.8. The overall Broker Experience Index, which combines measures including service, speed, digital tools and support, slipped slightly from 71.0 to 70.2.
Smart Money People has also introduced a new Broker Perception Map for H1 2026, designed to assess lenders across two measures: overall experience strength and the balance between operational delivery and relationship-led support.
The report is the sixteenth edition of the Mortgage Lender Benchmark and includes feedback from 980 brokers across 510 firms. The respondents rated 126 lenders, representing 98.1% of UK gross mortgage lending.
The average Net Promoter Score across all lenders was +40.9, a fall of 0.4 points compared with the previous report.
Alongside Halifax’s success, Nationwide Building Society was named the leading building society lender, while Pure Retirement retained its position as the top later life lender.
Pepper Money was again recognised as the leading specialist lender, with BM Solutions remaining the highest-rated buy-to-let specialist and Allica Bank retaining its position as the leading bridging and commercial lender.
Atom bank was once again named the best digital-first lender.
Jake Sandford, head of data and analytics at Smart Money People, said: “Despite the rate volatility that occurred during the first half of this year, it’s clear from these results that lenders across the sector broadly maintained their high standards to support brokers and their customers during uncertain times.
“However, the slight dip in metrics across the board alludes to the issues faced by the industry in the first half of this year and as always, undoubtedly lessons will have been learnt by the lending community this time around.”
Hamza Behzad, business development director at Finova, added: “As a technology provider powering one in five mortgages in the UK and with nearly £50 billion in loans and savings under management, Finova sees the Smart Money People Mortgage Lender Benchmark as a valuable source of insight into what is working well across the market and where there are opportunities to improve.
“By giving lenders access to meaningful feedback and performance data, the benchmark helps drive continuous improvement and supports better outcomes across the mortgage market.
“This aligns closely with our focus on enabling a more efficient, data-driven and customer-centric mortgage ecosystem.”