Mortgage lender Firstmac has made significant progress in selling loans online, something that many other lenders have struggled to do.In an investor presentation accompanying the launch of its latest issue of residential mortgage-backed securities this week, the company said that in the past 12 months 76 per cent of loan sales were sourced through its online lending business loans.com.au.Firstmac established loan.com.au in 2011 and the company now regards itself as a leader on the direct sales field. Forty-four per cent of all loans in the portfolio have been sourced through loans.com.au. The rest of its distribution is through mortgage managers, which accounted for 12 per cent of sales over the past year, aggregators (five per cent), brokers (four per cent) and private label (three per cent).Firstmac is settling an average of A$230 million of loans a month, which it estimates to be about one per cent of the market.It has 25,000 customers and at the end of last year the loan portfolio was worth $7.4 billion. Based on Australian Prudential Regulation Authority figures, a loan book of that size puts Firstmac on equal footing Citibank and not far behind HSBC.