The Intermediary – March 2026 - Flipbook - Page 32
The Interview.
Santander
career journey, the lender’s recently renewed
broker pledge, and the thinking behind ‘My First
Mortgage’ – Santander’s new 98% loan-to-value
(LTV) product.
Broker commitments
Jessica O’Connor speaks with
Graham Sellar, head of intermediaries
at Santander UK, about the lender’s
recent 98% LTV launch, and why he
believes intermediaries will remain
central to the mortgage market
hile product
innovation and
pricing strategies
continue to shape
competition, the
foundations of the
market remain
closely tied to
broker distribution. Few people have seen that
relationship evolve quite as closely as Graham
Sellar. With more than three decades working
within the intermediary channel, Sellar’s career
runs parallel with the development of modern
broker lending in the UK.
Now serving as head of intermediaries at
Santander UK, Sellar oversees the lender’s
broker relationships at a time when competition
for their attention is intense, and lenders are
increasingly looking for ways to reaffirm their
commitment to brokers across the nation. The
Intermediary met with Sellar to discuss his
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The Intermediary | March 2026
Sellar’s career began in 1996 when he joined
Abbey National as a business development
manager (BDM). Over the following decades,
he worked across a range of roles within
the intermediary division, building up both
geographic and managerial experience across
the network.
Abbey National was eventually acquired by
Santander, which then integrated additional
lenders, including Alliance & Leicester and
National & Provincial Building Society. Now
leading Santander’s intermediary operation,
Sellar remains deeply connected to the broker
community that shaped his career.
He reflects: “Why have I stayed here for so
long? I love mortgages, I love intermediaries
and it’s a really good market. It’s a very fulfilling
place to work.”
He describes the mortgage market as one
that never stands still. Property prices fluctuate,
interest rates rise and fall, and regulatory
frameworks shift over time, but brokers have
remained a constant presence.
Sellar adds: “In my time, brokers have always
been there looking after their customers.
It’s a very dynamic market and always very
interesting, and brokers are at the heart of that.”
That long-term relationship with
intermediaries is also embedded in the lender’s
own history, he notes: “Abbey National, now
Santander, has been supporting brokers for 35
years. We started in 1991, so this is our 35th
year of looking after them.”
That focus on intermediaries has been
particularly central to Santander’s strategy over
the past two years, following a period when
the bank’s lending activity reduced relative
to competitors.
Sellar acknowledges that during the years
immediately after the pandemic, the bank’s
market presence fluctuated, saying: “Lenders
come and go in the market. We were very
strong lending wise coming out of the Covid-19
pandemic. Then as a bank, we lent a lot less
in 2023 and 2024. That was because of the
