Reference Case Number: FOI2026/00170
Freedom of Information: Right to know request:
Please provide the number of mortgage broker firms who have more than 50 advisers with the permission to - 20. Advising or arranging (bringing about) regulated mortgage contracts for a non-business purpose. Ideally, this will include a list of these firms with the specific count per firm.
FCA response:
Before we answer your request, we would like to clarify the following:
As you have not specified a specific timeframe for the information you are seeking, we have taken your request to refer to the number of authorised firms for year-end 31 December 2024. This being the latest date for which we have comprehensive data.
We note that in your request you refer to ‘mortgage brokers firms’ and to firms with permission to ‘20. Advising or arranging (bringing about) regulated mortgage contracts for a non-business purpose’. We have interpreted this to refer to firms that hold permissions for at least one of the following regulated activities:
- ‘Advising on regulated mortgage contracts’
- ‘Arranging regulated mortgage contracts’
Based on this definition, the required information can be found in the table below:
| Name of Permission | Number of firms with over 50 mortgage advisors, with the following permission |
|---|---|
| Advising on regulated mortgage contracts | 64 |
| Arranging regulated mortgage contracts | 63 |
Please note, however, that not all firms that hold one or both of these permissions will necessarily be categorised as ‘mortgage brokers’, as some of these firms may also hold other unrelated permissions as their primary activity.
If, on the other hand, you are interested to know the number of firms with more than 50 mortgage advisers within our ‘Mortgage Intermediaries’ portfolio, that information is publicly available from Table 10 of our Retail Intermediaries Market Data 2024,[1] under ‘Download underlying data for 2024.
Finally, please note that we are unable to disclose the names of the relevant firms, as this constitutes 'confidential information' for the purposes of section 348 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA), which the FCA has received in the discharge of its public functions. We are therefore exempted from the duty to disclose this information under section 44 of FOIA. For more information on why this exemption applies, please see Annex A.