23,000 products bite the dust

Trigold revealed that its sourcing system now offers just 21,988 products - compared to 45,590 in August 2007.

Back in February 2002 there were just 4,000 mortgage products on offer, climbing to 16,000 in February 2004 in the run up to market regulation.

According to Trigold this continued to grow and had rocketed to a peak of around 67,000 by February 2007.

“These figures demonstrate the extent of the credit crunch on mortgage availability," said David Aylmer, Trigold's marketing and business development director, although he stressed that this must be taken in context.

“Over recent years we have witnessed a considerable increase in both the number of mortgage product providers and the products they made available. Live mortgage products in the UK intermediary market are still in excess of 2004 figures.

"There is no doubt that mortgage intermediaries are finding products choices limited in some sectors, but our evidence shows that intermediary activity remains strong with a mortgage being sourced on Trigold by a UK mortgage broker every second of the day."

Seven in every ten brokers currently subscribe to the Trigold system.