Since the bank launched the discounted variable mortgage on 1st September, online traffic to www.hsbc.co.uk's mortgage area has doubled and call volumes have increased by 78% compared with July and August.
Calls taken by HSBC's mortgage sales centres are running at their highest volumes for over a year as the bank's mortgages continue to be top in both fixed and variable best buys categories. As context, in the first six months of 2009 HSBC's market share of new loans was 9.7%.
Martijn van der Heijden, head of mortgages at HSBC commented: "Since announcing the 1.99% deal we have seen a huge amount of interest from customers. Although there's been some unfounded speculation that the deal would be reserved for a minority, in reality well over half the UK's 11.5 million mortgage holders qualify for the deal and HSBC continues to accept more than seven in ten applicants. We remain very competitive and open for mortgage business.
“HSBC is on track to meet its lending target of £15 billion by the end of the year. Our highly skilled underwriting teams are pro-active in looking for ways to responsibly say yes, within two days on average and we continue to approve loans for over seven in every ten applicants.”
