A mortgage aggregator has used its locally-owned, family-focused culture as a springboard to reimagine the relationship between customer and broker at its first retail location.
Loan Market Group has announced its retail shopfront The Hub, on an iconic high street in Melbourne. It intends for the space to “turn the experience customers expect from the financial services industry on its head.”
“The Hub’s design replicates the sense of comfort that sitting around the kitchen table offers. Customers and our brokers are going to want to come here and work together to find solutions in a warm, free-flowing environment,” said chief customer experience officer Jason Furnell.
The space, decorated with locally sourced materials, handcrafted Australian products and Indigenous artwork, is intended to encourage collaboration between customers and financial specialists in a comfortable setting.
The Hub fits among the bars and style of Melbourne’s Chapel Street with its “inner-city energy”, graffiti-decorated exterior, and open plan design.
“We’ve had some people pop in off the street to enquire what it is, and that’s a reflection of us pulling back on the branding and typical industry lay-out to focus on the experience: creating a partnership environment where the customer is as important as the broker,” said Furnell.
The interior of The Hub resembles a contemporary home and was specifically designed to feel welcoming and personal. The intention was to stay away from “bright logos and empty slogans” that lead clients to feeling isolated.
“The last thing we wanted it to feel like was a bank,” Furnell added.
Loan Market says it has created something that is “different from all other financial industry retail spaces” and there are plans to bring The Hub to other states in the near future.
