However, Tim Wheeldon, COO at Fluent (pictured above), felt that the increasing popularity of secured loans did not happen without a lot of effort.

“What the new business figures don’t tell you is just how much hard work has gone into building business volumes,” said Tim.

“The industry should be particularly proud of how it has succeeded in promoting secured loans to the broker community since MCD in 2016.

“There was no magic bullet involved.

“Certainly, MCD did offer the intermediary community the chance to re-evaluate how it approached clients looking to raise capital, but it has been the work carried out by providers and lenders in taking the secured loan message to the broker channel that has been the real catalyst.

“After MCD, there was a huge amount of excitement that business volumes for second charge business would explode because of what was seen, wrongly, as a direct endorsement by the regulator.

“Understandably, brokers by and large were not impressed and – as we at Fluent predicted – increases in new business have been steady and come as a result of education rather than coercion.”

Tim continued by adding that recent reports stating that secured loan new business could double in 2018 seemed to be overly optimistic.

“Here at Fluent, we are optimistic that second charge lending will increase in 2018.

“However, we believe that the sector is more likely to grow at a measured rate, backed by the increasing numbers of advisers who are now aware of where secured loans can sit in their advice process, rather than by a quantum leap sourced by other factors.”