ANZ has doubled its training hours in the past year in a drive to boost proprietary sales and reduce reliance on brokers.
The major bank's half year results reported 150,000 hours of training in the past 12 months, approximately two-thirds of which was specifically targeted at the retail sector.
Mark Hand, managing director of retail distribution, said the training’s core focus was in boosting the skills of their front-line staff, reducing dependence on broker channels.
“I felt our network needed to be having better quality conversations with our customers,” said Hand.
“Otherwise we’re effectively encouraging them to go to brokers, and that opens the option for them to bank with someone else.”
Hand said that, while the majority of mortgage sales in the last half came from proprietary channels, ANZ has still maintained a good relationship with brokers.
#pb# “The productivity has lifted in our branch network, so deals that we were missing out on before we’re capturing, but we’re still very active and big supporters of the broker network.”
Improved sales techniques are what have allowed ANZ to continue to grow their mortgage book despite a slow-down in the industry, said Hand.
“Before we were at the mercy of the market, if the market fell our mortgage volumes tended to fall too,” he said.
“In staying a good supporter of the broker network and reinvigorating teaching our people in how to deal with our customers directly, we’ve seen productivity improve in both channels.”
Hand said he expects the higher volume of training hours to continue for the foreseeable future, to ensure sales staff have the ability to deal with increasingly complex customer enquiries.
“Customers don’t come in to do simple transactions like they used to. The number of transactions in-bank falls year on year, but what they are coming in to do is have conversations on mortgages and small business and wealth.”
“We’ve made quite an investment on gearing our front-line up to be really well equipped to have mortgage conversations, but we will spend more money on helping them understand how to have all of those complex conversations.”
