According to UK Finance, the total value of product transfers last year was £167.4 billion.

Of the total, 662,700 transfers (6.9% more than in 2018), worth £97 billion, were conducted on an advised basis and 532,400 (4.8% fewer than in 2018), worth £70.4 billion, were on an execution-only basis.

The final quarter of 2019 saw a 4.6% annual decrease in the number of product transfers to 309,300. Of these, 166,700 were advised and 142,600 were execution-only.

By value, Q4 product transfers represented £44.3 billion of mortgage borrowing, down 1.5% year-on-year. Of these, £25.2 billion was advised and £19.2 billion was execution-only.

Martijn van der Heijden, chief strategy officer at Habito, said the quarterly drop in product transfers supports a trend the online broker has seen in its customer data.

He commented: “Remortgages as a percentage of transactions are tracking around 2% higher at the start of 2020 compared to the same period last year.

“Although it is still quite early to draw firm conclusions, it appears that an increasing number of people are turning to free, whole of market brokers to take advantage of great advice and highly competitive low-interest-rate deals, rather than simply continuing with the same provider.

“This is an encouraging trend. We know from our own extensive research that loyalty does not always pay and that many homeowners stand to save up to £300 if they switch to a better deal.

“The key is that homeowners nearing the end of their fixed term leave plenty of time to remortgage, ideally no longer than four months, to start their whole of market search.”