Company Announcements

22 May 2024

Mortgage Advice Bureau (Holdings) plc ("MAB" or "the Group")

AGM Statement

Mortgage Advice Bureau (Holdings) plc (AIM:MAB1.L) will hold its Annual General Meeting at 1pm today during which the Non-Executive Chair, Katherine Innes Ker, will make the following statement:

"New mortgage applications in the market have been better year to date compared to the equivalent period last year. All purchase-related activity has picked up, including a welcome recovery in Buy-to-Let, whilst re-mortgaging is slightly down versus last year. This reflects a reduced number of borrowers needing to re-finance during the period, plus a greater proportion of those that have re-financed selecting Product Transfers instead. MAB has performed well in these conditions.

"In terms of completions, as expected, the wider market was slow in Q1 2024, having carried a low pipeline into this year. This resulted in a 13% reduction in new mortgage lending² for Q1 2024 compared to the prior year. Despite these slower market conditions, we have continued to grow our market share, with MAB's total mortgage completions for Q1 2024 broadly stable at £5.7bn (2023: £5.8bn). This has been achieved, in part, through increased productivity across our adviser base. Our new mortgage completions were £4.1bn (2023: £4.4bn) with the balance of £1.6bn (2023: £1.4bn) being Product Transfers.

"On 17 May 2024, our mainstream Adviser numbers were 1,906 (31 December 2023: 1,918) and our total¹ number of Advisers was 2,110 (31 December 2023: 2,158). The momentum in our new Appointed Representative ("AR") recruitment activity continues to be strong, and consequently we expect a high number of new firms and advisers to join MAB over the next few months. Our pipeline of incoming new ARs has also continued to grow strongly over the last few months. This momentum has built as a direct result of the significant developments in technology and lead generation that we have delivered, as well as further investment in our recruitment resources to ensure we can capitalise on the opportunity our proposition enhancements bring.

"We expect our existing AR firms to start growing their adviser numbers again later in the year, most likely as consumer confidence improves when there is more certainty around the outlook for mortgage interest rates and our firms can plan with a greater degree of certainty.

"MAB's performance, even though mortgage activity as a result of the subdued market conditions remains below long-term averages, is in line with the Board's expectations, with further improvement expected in the second half of this year. I am therefore delighted to be leaving MAB in excellent shape as I hand over to Mike Jones who will succeed me as Chair with effect from today. "

Peter Brodnicki, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"Our performance once again demonstrates MAB's ability to continue winning market share in all market conditions. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Katherine for her excellent contribution since IPO. It has been an absolute pleasure working with her, and she leaves the business in fantastic shape.

I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Emilie McCarthy³ as our new Chief Financial Officer, replacing Lucy Tilley. I congratulate Lucy and thank her for her outstanding contribution to MAB since she joined in 2015. We wish her every success in the future."

¹ Includes a total of 204 advisers at 17 May 2024 who are advisers in directly authorised firms that use MAB's subsidiary, Auxilium, a specialist protection service provider, for protection. For directly authorised advisers the fees received by MAB represent the net income received by MAB as there are no commission payouts made by MAB. MAB's Later life advisers are now dual authorised and hence are included in the mainstream number.

² UK Finance, product transfer lending figures not available until early June.

³ Emilie McCarthy was appointed as a Director of the Single Homeless Project on 15 May 2024.

Enquiries:

Media Enquiries: investor.relations@mab.org.uk