Our awards are decided by the only votes that really matter – yours. We asked customers of all the major mortgage providers to tell us about their experiences. Now we can reveal how they rated the UK’s largest mortgage lenders.
The winning and highly commended companies were decided by both their overall customer satisfaction scores (star ratings out of five) and their recommendation scores (the percentage of survey respondents who would recommend the brand to a friend). Read more on our methodology and see our full results below.
Now without any further ado, here are our winners (*applause please*)…
Nationwide pipped Barclays to take the win in our mortgages category for the second year in a row. The building society was rated 5 out of 5 stars by its mortgage customers, with a “would recommend” score of just over 91%.
Compare mortgages from Nationwide
High street bank Barclays gets a well deserved highly commended award this year. It also scored 5 out of 5 stars in our customer satisfaction survey, with just under 91% of its customers saying they would recommend this mortgage provider to a friend.
Compare mortgages from Barclays
| Overall satisfaction | Customers who’d recommend | Issuer | Review | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ★★★★★ | 91% |  | As the UK’s second largest mortgage provider, the building society offers a wide number of products, mainly with fixed rates. Founded in 1846 as a mutual financial institution, Nationwide is run for the benefit of its members, and consistently ranks highly for customer service. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 91% |  | Barclays mainly offers fixed rate mortgages, along with some tracker products. This bank often has leading rates, and around 9 out of 10 of the customers we surveyed would also recommend the lender to a friend. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 89% |  | Santander is another provider offering mostly fixed rate mortgages, and it regularly ranks highly in best-rates tables. The bank’s customer service performance also generally polls well, reflected in the 89% “would recommend” score in our survey. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 88% |  | NatWest has a range of fixed rate mortgages available, including 95% loan to value (LTV) products. Its easy to deal with approach and helpful customer support were praised by some of the customers in our survey. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 92% |  | Now part of Lloyds Banking Group, Halifax offers one of the largest number of mortgages from a single lender, particularly in the fixed-rate space. Not always the top ranked for competitive rates, the bank does poll well for customer service. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 90% |  | The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is part of the same banking group as NatWest. It has a decent number of mortgage products available, which are fixed terms products, although it doesn’t often have the most competitive rates. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 87% |  | L&C is the country’s largest fee-free mortgage broker. With access to over 90 lenders, it’s able to advise on a vast choice of mortgages depending on a borrower’s personal circumstances. | Visit broker |
| ★★★★★ | 85% |  | Virgin Money first began operating as a bank in 2010, developing its mortgage and saving products before its current account. Predominantly online-based, in 2019 the lender was the first in the UK to launch a 15-year fixed term mortgage. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 81% |  | The UK’s biggest bank is not the UK’s biggest mortgage lender. But HSBC does offer fixed term mortgages at rates that are consistently among the most competitive. Its customers in our survey also highlighted HSBC’s good customer service and easy to follow processes. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 85% |  | Lloyds offers an extensive number of mortgages, which are predominantly fixed term deals lasting 2, 5 or 10 years. It currently lends on LTV ratios of up to 95%, and is recommended by 85% of its customers in our survey. | Compare with broker |
| ★★★★★ | 80% |  | Mojo is an online mortgage broker, which works with more than 90 lenders. It gives its users access to a range of different mortgage products in the market, with an application process that takes place online. | |
| ★★★★★ | 67% |  | Relative newcomer Habito launched in 2015. It’s a digital-only, whole of the market mortgage broker, giving its customers access to mortgages from all different UK lenders. Unusually, Habito is also a lender itself, and launched the UK’s first 40-year fixed term mortgage in 2021. | Compare with broker |
We asked mortgage holders to rate their satisfaction with the service they had received from their lender, and also whether they would recommend their mortgage provider to a friend. Our independent survey of 1,305 mortgage customers was carried out in December 2021 – read full details of our methodology here.
We have shown all the star ratings and recommendation scores for the brands listed in the table above, and used these results to decide the winners of our awards (if there was a draw on the star ratings score, we used the “would recommend” percentage as a tie-breaker).
★★★★★ — Excellent
★★★★★ — Good
★★★★★ — Average
★★★★★ — Subpar
★★★★★ — Poor
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