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Intermediaries accounted for 68% of Suncorp’s $46.9bn home loan portfolio in the first half of FY18 – up from 65% in the same period the previous year.
Suncorp partly attributes the growth in its broker-originated business to the changes it made over the past twelve months.
The company said it has reduced the time it takes to give conditional approval, increased its transparency and communication with brokers, and cut down data entry requirements and processing time.
The growth does not mean the bank is prioritising one channel over another.
A company spokesperson told Australian Broker that Suncorp treats its channels equally and that its priority is to provide customers with a choice of channels.
The spokesperson pointed to a general industry trend towards broker origination, which indicates a shift in how customers prefer to manage their lending requirements.
However, not all lenders are seeing increases in the share of their broker-originated business. Major bank CBA, for example, seems to be bucking the trend.
CBA's first half of FY18 results show that brokers accounted for only 36% of its home loan flows, while retail proprietary channels contributed 64% of the flows – up from 57% in the first half of the previous year. This means the share of brokers in the business dropped by seven percentage points in the first half of FY18 over the previous year.
Meanwhile, Suncorp announced yesterday (15 February) that its total lending grew by 8.7% annualised, with improved growth across both retail and business lending. This represents a turnaround from the 0.34% decline in lending it recorded in the first half of FY17.
The company said its lending momentum was within its risk appetite and well above system growth, which was 6.3%.
“Suncorp continues to maintain disciplined lending practices and new business credit quality was strong over the period,” said CEO and managing director Michael Cameron.
The company said that lending asset growth remained within APRA’s macroprudential caps and that it has low exposure to higher risk segments, such as inner city apartment markets.
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