Where does a mortgage case actually go? A broker time audit
IMLA puts the average UK mortgage broker at 95 cases per quarter. The maths says each case gets ~5 hours. The maths also says most of that time is fragmented across five disconnected tools. Here is the time audit nobody runs.
Every mortgage adviser knows cases take time. Very few have actually measured where.
This piece runs the maths from the public data and sketches what an honest time audit looks like. Not to tell anyone how to do their job. But because the numbers are uncomfortable enough to be useful.
The baseline
IMLA's Q1 2025 Mortgage Market Tracker put the average UK mortgage broker at 95 cases per quarter, up from 80 in Q4 2024.
That's roughly 32 cases a month, or 7 to 8 a week. Take a 35-hour week and you've got roughly 4.5 hours per case if you do nothing else. No admin. No marketing. No CPD. No compliance. No team management. No client retention work.
In practice, working brokers say a typical residential case eats more like 5 to 7 hours of focused time. Before factoring in tomorrow's chasing-the-solicitor calls.
So the maths only just adds up. And that's before anything goes wrong.
Where the hours actually go
There's no single industry-published breakdown of broker time-per-stage. But combining what brokers say in surveys, what trade press reports, and what tool vendors quote in their own marketing, a typical case looks something like this:
- Fact-find and initial client meeting - 45 to 60 min
- Criteria research - 30 to 90 min (highly variable; specialist cases at the top end)
- Affordability calculations across multiple lenders - 30 to 60 min
- Sourcing and product selection - 30 to 45 min
- Suitability report / recommendation write-up - 30 to 45 min
- Application packaging and submission - 30 to 60 min
- Follow-up admin, chasing solicitors, lender ops - 60 to 120 min cumulative over the life of the case
Total: 4.5 to 7+ hours per case, depending on complexity. The fact-find and the back-end admin are roughly fixed costs. The variable bit (the bit that swings most under tool choice) is criteria, affordability, sourcing.
The disconnected-tools tax
The under-appreciated number in that breakdown is context-switching.
A broker running a complex case in 2026 typically uses 4 to 6 separate systems: a CRM, a criteria tool, a sourcing platform, lender affordability calculators (each lender has its own portal), an e-signature tool, and email.
UK Finance has noted that the rise in non-standard income models has materially increased the admin burden. More documents. More verifications. More lender-specific quirks.
The trade press has called out the same pattern: brokerages are moving away from disconnected CRMs, PDFs, spreadsheets, sourcing tools and email threads toward one orchestrated workflow.
Every system swap costs minutes of focus. Three swaps an hour, 6 hours of focused work a day, and you've spent 30 to 45 minutes daily on context-switching alone. Across 95 cases a quarter, that's a lot of work-time evaporating into the gap between tabs.
What actually moves the number
The brokers reporting genuine efficiency gains in 2025 talk about the same three things. None of them are "work faster."
- Re-using fact-find data across tools, instead of re-keying it for each lender's portal. (This is the single biggest time win.)
- Doing criteria, affordability and sourcing inside one workflow, not five tabs.
- Audit-trail-as-a-by-product - generating Consumer Duty evidence as the work happens, not assembling it on Friday afternoon.
None of these are radical claims. They're the obvious wins that have been obvious for five years. What's changed is that integrated platforms now exist that can deliver them. Which is why every adviser tech vendor is talking about "one workflow" in 2026.
The audit nobody runs
Most brokers don't audit their time. They feel busy, the cases close, the commission lands.
But running even a back-of-envelope check ("how long did my last case actually take?") usually surfaces 30 to 60 minutes per case that's recoverable without working harder. Just by reducing tool friction.
Across 95 cases a quarter, that's the better part of a working week reclaimed.
The case for integrated adviser tech isn't a marketing slogan. It's a back-of-envelope calculation. Try the audit on your last five cases and see what falls out.
