National Australia Bank (NAB) is ramping up its proprietary channel.
The major bank released full financial year results, for the 12 months ending in September 2025, on Thursday, showing that proprietary lending of Australian mortgages surged 46% compared with the start of financial year 2024.
In financial year 2025, 41% of mortgages in home lending were written through the proprietary channel, compared with 38% the year before.
"This has been achieved by investing in customer relationships, investing in new bankers and the tools to help them and introducing solutions that deliver simpler, faster and safer outcomes,” said NAB Chief Executive Officer Andrew Irvine.
However, third-party brokers still write the majority of home loans at the bank, just not as many as in previous years. In FY25, roughly 59% of all new business came through the third-party broker channel, down from 61.1% in the second half of FY24, and 64.9% in the first half of FY24.
While many market players have wondered what this means for the future of Australia's broking industry, NAB has repeatedly said it is not moving away from third-party brokers.
"The broker channel is a hugely important channel," said Adam Brown, executive broker distribution at NAB. "More and more Australians are turning to brokers for support."
But the role of the broker throughout Australia's mortgage landscape has been in question for some time. At NAB, the bank hired roughly 150 new proprietary home lenders in 2025's first half. The move was meant to solidify its own direct lending capabilities. But it also reduced reliance, at least in part, on third-party brokers.
Meanwhile, the value of proprietary channel mortgages for Australian home loans climbed to $19.5 billion in the second half of FY25, up from $13.3 billion in the same period of FY24.
Banker productivity — or the value of loans written per banker — was also up, 27%, year-over-year.
In other parts of NAB, the major revealed in September that it was planning to cut 400 jobs, primarily in its technology and enterprise operations divisions. Then in October, the bank said it was investing in technology teams in Vietnam and India. That same month, NAB promoted Shane Conway to group executive, transformation, continuing to oversee the delivery of NAB's technology modernisation and simplification agenda.
NAB is anticipating the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will continue to hold the official cash rate (OCR) at 3.6% until May of 2026.
"We are making good progress on our key priorities of growing business banking, driving deposit growth and strengthening proprietary home lending," Irvine said. "This has been supported by targeted investments in front-line bankers and technology-enabled solutions delivering simpler, faster and safer outcomes."
