With the shift towards a more device-led digital economy, brokers will play a more important role as time poor consumers demand instant decision making.
These predictions were made by
Izzy Silva, general manager of consumer & digital marketing at Veda, in a panel at the RFi Group’s Australian Mortgage Innovation Summit 2017 on Friday (24 February).
In this environment, brokers will play a very important role in helping customers make decisions amidst a myriad of information and data, he said.
“It’s about the quality of the decision and the time to get to that decision,” he told the audience. “A broker can bridge that gap for the consumer. Build trust and trust builds a longer term relationship.”
Also speaking in the panel,
Mark Woolnough, head of third party distribution at
ING Direct, discussed how consumer trust of brokers’ value propositions had caused them to secure more than 50% of the market.
“You don’t get to represent greater than 50% of a dual market if you don’t have a very strong value proposition,” he said.
“The broker provides an element of honesty. They’re trusted and their role is to essentially take all of the complexity and confusion out of buying property or refinancing a home loan.”
He saw broker market share continuing to grow in the next five years as the digital and human elements augment together. However, he said that any change would be gradual rather than a massive shift.
“In the next five or ten years, there won’t be too much change. What will happen will evolve rather than be an out-and-out revolution.”
Glenn Gibson, head of sales and marketing at AMP Bank told the panel that any slight change would occur in the way that lenders and brokers did business.
“Where it’s really interesting is it’s becoming more complex,” he said. “There is such a variety out there in regards to little nuances in products that the consumers just don’t understand the differences.”
Therefore a broker’s ability to talk to customers and advise them of the right products will remain through face-to-face meetings, video conference calls or any other means, he said.
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