The
Bank of Queensland (BOQ) has announced a mixed bag in its latest financial results with growth in the broker channel and a decrease in its overall loan book.
Within the third party channel, the bank reached a total broker number of 6,000 during the past half year across both the BOQ and Virgin Money Australia (VMA) brands. During this half, broker settlements contributed to 15% of all housing loan originations and accelerated the bank’s efforts to expand its footprint outside of Queensland.
Through recent partnerships with
Aussie and
Connective, BOQ forecasts that Virgin Money will accumulate a network of 3,000 accredited brokers in the second half of 2017.
The bank has also said that volumes of Virgin Money’s Reward Me Home Loan are “ahead of plan” with a total contribution of $211m of loan growth since its launch in May 2016. Application volumes have built steadily over the half with the product “gaining traction with both customers and mortgage brokers,” the bank said.
However, total lending growth across residential, commercial and specialised loans contracted by an annualised figure of 1% due to higher levels of competition.
“Margin and credit quality were prioritised over growth in the first half against a backdrop of changing funding conditions and intense price competition.”
Home lending decreased by 2% from $30.0m in February 2016 to $29.5m a year later.
The bank has focused on improving processes and systems in order to reduce turnaround time on retail and business lending applications.
“Implementation of BOQ’s new digitised mortgage origination platform over the past 12 months has been completed with approximately 70% of mortgage applications to be covered by the new streamlined process delivering faster time to ‘yes’ for customers.”
The number of arrears on the bank’s total assets has also fallen on a year-on-year basis with 30 days past due arrears dropping by 17% and 90 days past due arrears dropping by 15% comparing February this year and last.
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