Practical, independent marketing guidance for UK mortgage brokers and advisers. IMLA estimates that around 87% of mortgage business now goes through an intermediary, which means the competition is no longer the lender. It is the broker down the road with clearer proof than you.
Written for advisers, not for borrowers. Whito is a marketing publisher. We are not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, we hold no Firm Reference Number, and nothing in this section is financial advice, mortgage advice, compliance advice or a financial promotion. Compliance sign off for anything your firm publishes rests with your firm or your network. If you are choosing an adviser, check the firm on the FCA's Financial Services Register at register.fca.org.uk.
87%
Intermediary share of mortgage business, 2024 (IMLA)
57%
Recent mortgage changers who used a broker (FCA, 2024)
32,990
Mortgage adviser posts, down from 34,342 (FCA, 2025 data)
£49 to £139
Published price per mortgage enquiry, VouchedFor, excl VAT, from 1 Sep 2026
Start here
What you need to know
- The channel has already won, so the fight is between brokers. IMLA put the intermediary share of mortgage business at 87% in 2024 and expects around 87% across 2026 and 2027. You are not persuading people to use a broker any more. You are persuading them to use you rather than the next one.
- Fewer advisers, more money. FCA data for 2025 shows mortgage adviser posts down to 32,990 from 34,342, while revenue from mortgage broking rose 15.9% to £1.6bn, with 77.5% of it still coming from commission. Each client relationship is worth more than it was, which raises the cost of losing one.
- Your strongest marketing asset is a public register, and almost nobody uses it properly. Research commissioned by the broker Boon Brokers in June 2025, with 1,002 respondents, found around a third treat verified FCA regulation as a key trust factor while roughly three quarters do not always check whether their source of advice is regulated. It is broker commissioned, so the direction matters more than the decimals. People want the reassurance and will not go looking for it.
- Your marketing is regulated, and generic agency advice will get you into trouble. Financial promotions rules, MCOB 3A, the Consumer Duty and the FCA's social media guidance FG24/1 all shape what you can publish. Urgency, scarcity and one dramatic number are exactly what that framework exists to catch.
What we hear from brokers
Everyone says the same three things
Fee free. Whole of market. Five star reviews. When the whole category runs the same script, the script stops selling anything, and price becomes the only difference left.
The leads cost more than they are worth
Bought enquiries at £49 to £139 a time, no idea how many turn into completions, and a network fee on the other side that nobody publishes. The arithmetic never gets done.
Compliance kills every campaign
An agency writes something punchy, compliance takes it apart, and six weeks later nothing has gone out. So the marketing quietly stops.
Where to start
Whito order. Structure before scale, which means you do not skip to the paid channels.
Start: one version of every claim
Years trading, lenders on panel, cases completed, review count. One number each, identical on every page. We found a national brand publishing two different versions of its own headline statistic on the same day. This is an afternoon of work, and it changes what an AI assistant is able to say about you.
Start: make your permissions unambiguous
Firm Reference Number in the footer and on the about page, as text rather than inside an image. If you are an appointed representative, name your principal. Any gap between your website and the register is the first thing to fix.
Start: a review request in every case
Same trigger, same wording, every client, no exceptions. Reviews were the top trust factor in the research, and only volume turns a rating into evidence. The firms with eighteen thousand reviews did nothing cleverer than this for longer.
Build: put names on your writing
Bylines, author pages, real qualifications. Nobody trusts a mortgage explanation written by a company. Forty bylined guides by named advisers beat two hundred anonymous ones, in search and in AI answers.
Build: capture email, and ask one question
First time buyer, remortgage, buy to let, or later life. One question at signup turns a list into four lists. A mortgage is researched for months and acted on once, which makes it close to the ideal product for an owned list. Most brokers do not hold one.
Scale: paid, video and third party proof
Last, not first. Treat the first month of paid search as research, because there is no credible UK cost per click benchmark for mortgage keywords to plan from. Then trade press and independent recognition.
Three things that work in this market
Teach people how to check you
A short section saying you are on the FCA register, here is how to look us up, here is what to check. It does more for trust than any badge graphic, and it quietly serves the three quarters of borrowers who never check anybody.
Segment at the point of capture
The strongest email signup we found in the category asks which situation you are in before you subscribe. One question, and the content stops being generic for everyone who gets it.
Narrow the promise
The one brand in our leaderboard not competing on fee free advice built its whole position on affordability instead. A narrower promise is easier to prove, easier to remember, and easier for software to retrieve.
Three expensive mistakes
Copying the visible layer
You see a competitor with ten thousand reviews and a TikTok account, so you open a TikTok account. The reviews are the output of an operation that works. The TikTok is the least important asset in the building.
Budgeting like an unregulated business
Website, ads, directory, done. Meanwhile the largest cost of winning a client sits in a network fee or a compliance overhead that no network publishes. You cannot find your real cost per case in a marketing spreadsheet.
Letting an unauthorised supplier own your promotions
An agency can draft. Approval is a different act with a legal meaning, and since February 2024 it needs specific FCA permission. Communicating a financial promotion without authorisation, approval or an applicable exemption is a criminal offence.
Guides for mortgage advisers
Top 5 UK Mortgage Broker Marketing Breakdown (2026)L&C, Habito, Mojo, Alexander Hall and Tembo, scored on visible marketing structure only. What separates them is duller than you think, and buildable by a two person firm.
Will AI Recommend Your Mortgage Brokerage?Assistants hand over three names, not ten links. What they can actually retrieve about a mortgage firm, and the work that makes you the easiest one to verify.
Mortgage Adviser Trust Signals: What Clients Check, and What the Rules Let You SayA third of borrowers say FCA regulation matters and three quarters never check it. Plus a plain summary of the promotions rules that decide what you can publish.
Not sure which stage you are at?
Run your firm through our free marketing scorecard. It takes a couple of minutes and tells you whether to fix your structure or start spending.
Get your free scoreFollowing this study we opened a mortgage advisers section in the Whito directory. Every firm listed is checked against the Companies House register and listings are free. Whito is not FCA authorised and does not verify anyone’s FCA permissions, so check any adviser on the FCA register before taking advice.