National Australia Bank (NAB) continues to grow its proprietary lending channel, as reliance on third-party brokers slowly dwindles.
While brokers still settle approximately half of the major bank's home loans, their share has fallen over the past year.
In FY26, or the year ending 30 September 2026, NAB's total proprietary channel home loan drawdowns rose to 50%, up from 41% in FY25, the banking giant revealed on Thursday during its full-year earnings report. That means settlements in the broker channel fell from 59% last year, to 50 percent this year. The numbers do not include digital bank Ubank, which falls under the NAB umbrella.
NAB Chief Executive Officer Andrew Irvine described the results as "progress continued on our three key priorities of growing business banking, driving deposit growth and strengthening proprietary home lending."
The latest update comes as banks continue to push their own in-house lending channels, leaving some market players to wonder about the future of mortgage broking in Australia.
In the case of NAB, the major solidified its proprietary lending capabilities by hiring roughly 150 new proprietary home lenders in 2025's first half, offering a preview of the bank's plans to grow its direct channels while reducing reliance on third-party brokers.
Then in October, NAB revealed plans to eliminate up to 2,500 jobs, or roughly 6% of its staff by FY27. It is unclear whether the restructure will impact broker roles. NAB did not respond to requests for additional comments before publication.
But Irvine said in public comments that the bank continues to support customers "in challenging economic conditions."
Those conditions include higher interest rates and reduced borrowing capacity, rising living costs and stubborn inflation, falling property prices combined with an ongoing housing shortage, changes to tax settings that reduce incentives and continued global uncertainty.
"Taken together these factors have weighed on customer confidence, as well as on business conditions," Irvine said. "Through this, NAB's bankers are staying close to our customers, which is really important as things get tougher. As we look forward, we need to simplify the way we run our bank and improve our operational excellence. And like all our customers, we need to continue to adapt to ensure NAB remains strong today and over the long term. That is why we announced that we are simplifying our operating model and better aligning our organization to prioritise growth and technology initiatives for our customers. These actions are required to reduce duplication, to speed up decision-making and to further strengthen our risk posture, as well as direct investment to what matters most to all of our customers."
In June, NAB warned that property prices would likely fall. Two months later, during NAB's August trading update, the bank said that the Australian home lending market softened in the third quarter, with NAB’s applications down 15%, compared with the second quarter.
But even amid greater market headwinds, NAB's Australian home loan lending — including personal banking, business and private banking, and the Ubank business — rose 3.6% in FY26. Meanwhile, Ubank home loan balances were up 11.6%, with customers growing to more than one million.
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