The CML Largest Mortgage Lenders League Table, used by the industry to benchmark gross lending figures, does not compare lending over the same period of time for all companies. The majority of lenders in the 30 listed have figures calculated on a calendar year basis but there are seven lenders with year-ends that do not match the calendar year.
Jeff Knight, Director of Marketing at GMAC-RFC, said, “According to the CML, Bristol & West took tenth position from GMAC-RFC based on lending during their financial year which ran from April 1 2005 to March 31 2006. This has created an anomaly because GMAC-RFC’s lending was assessed over a different period, namely January 1 2005 to 31 December 2005.
“Comparing financial years with calendar years has enabled Bristol & West to exclude the depressed post M-Day Q1 2005 period from its numbers and substitute the buoyant period of Q1 2006, to produce a figure of £7.8 billion of gross lending. But if GMAC-RFC’s figures are re-stated over the same period, for a fair and direct comparison, it would show we advanced £8.9 billion, thereby retaining our number 10 position.”
The CML has recently added a footnote to its league table to clarify that lenders’ ‘individual rankings may be affected where lenders have different financial year-ends’. GMAC-RFC is also asking the CML to change its methodology in future years so all lenders are compared on a like for like basis over the calendar year, which will have the added benefit of allowing the league tables to be published sooner. The CML has agreed to approach other lenders about this.
“Having seen erroneous headlines suggesting that we had lost our spot as the UK’s tenth largest lender measured by gross advances, we wanted to clarify the position for the benefit of our staff and customers, and commentators generally. We remain a top ten lender and, irrespective of the CML’s methodology, do not anticipate the same problem when the league table is published based on 2006 numbers because our lending has grown about 60% this year to over £11 billion versus a market growth of about 16%.” continues Knight.
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