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An asset finance services partner has launched its company rebrand today as part of its new growth strategy.
Platform Consolidated Group will now become Platform Finance, which its new CEO says provides more advantages and opportunities for its partners and brokers.
New CEO Brad Crinion has been joined by a new executive team to help strengthen its market position.
Crinion took over from former CEO Mike Nicholls, who has now moved to a new role of chairman of the board.
Speaking to Australian Broker, Crinion said when he took the role he knew he wanted to shake-up the business, which has exceeded $1billion in asset finance annually.
He said, “When I got told about the interview I went to the website page and it didn’t tell me anything about what the business did, it was a generic name.
“The website was a picture of a guy wearing a tie and just a mobile number so I thought I really wanted to provide a fresh strategic direction.”
Platform works with a number of partners which will now be able to unify under the one brand.
Crinion said, “There's obviously a lot of advantages of the rebranding. With all the changes happening in the business as well we wanted a fresh approach to how we were going to market.
“It’s really better everybody together and really the whole reason if you want to get to the crux of it, it’s just bringing together everyone as one team working together as one business.
“Everyone working as one team, one sales team, one processing team regardless of where people are working in the country, focusing on the products and services we can offer. We wanted our brokers to leverage off a national brand.
“We have actually done a restructure with our internal model and we have moved all of our staff on to commission only and that’s going to provide a great stepping stone for future growth in the business.
“It's got uncapped potential for brokers that want to join us internally. We can bring on as many brokers as we like. They will now get to leverage off a national brand. It all allow us to go to suppliers under the one banner, it will improve our bargaining power.”
The group is also in the final stages of developing Platform Connect, its new cloud-based system that manages leads, finance applications, and settles customer contracts.
Crinion added, “We're continuing looking at ways to improve the relationship and service we’re offering our brokers.
“We're just about to release our new system for lead generation for deal settlement which is going to be one of the best in the industry.
“That's going to be available to brokers and it’s going to be a full CRM system.
“These improvements in efficiencies will allow us to explore expansion opportunities into new business areas, as well as new regions that we previously have not operated in.”
Crinion has 16 years’ commercial finance experience, in Australia and internationally. Employed as the financial controller for Platform earlier this year, Crinion was then promoted to CEO in June.
As part of his role as CEO, Crinion has appointed an Executive Leadership Team which he believes is a critical step for the new strategic direction, in order to further strengthen the group’s offering to brokers Australia-wide.
The executive team includes Damian Mantini to director of aggregation and strategic partnerships, and Richard Kew to national sales director. The group is completed by Mike Nicholls and Peter Schroeder as executive directors, Chris Penney, chief operations officer and Caroline Grima, general manager.
