NAB has reaffirmed its commitment to brokers and acknowledged the critical role they play amid an uncertain market at its Broker Forward View webinar on August 10.
Speaking at the webinar, which also included NAB chief economist Alan Oster and CoreLogic Asia Pacific head of research Tim Lawless, Nicole Triandos (pictured above), NAB head of strategic partnerships, broker distribution, expressed a sense of cautious optimism about the current mortgage market.
“NAB research shows that the cost-of-living pressures are by far the biggest cause of stress,” Triandos said. “And while most customers remain in a pretty good shape overall, there are some that need additional support.”
Triandos pointed out NAB’s efforts to address the current levels of mortgage stress, with its team proactively calling 8,700 NAB home loan customers to see if they needed assistance.
However, only 14 customers needed help through the bank’s hardship program NAB Assist. Even so, Triandos encouraged brokers to ensure customers contact NAB Assist “as early as they can”.
“I think things may change over time, but even more so, brokers play a critical role in this environment,” she said.
Recognising the challenges that the current market presented for homeowners, Triandos explained what NAB had done around policy and its team such as introducing a “refreshed approach” to its refinance policies and introducing relationship managers (deskbound BDMs).
“We also have our Advantedge team, which is our white-label lending team that are aligned to service brokers as well,” Triandos said. “We are doing everything we can to help brokers on the ground but also, we recognise brokers need to be supporting customers, so we are there to support them in that way.”
Refinance in the current broker market has grown rapidly with interest rates, sitting around 50% whereas a couple of years ago it was only at close to 30%.
Triandos said she the way the banks interacted with customers was “changing” but there was certainly “a lot more people” refinancing.
Because of this, Triandos said NAB was “happy to end” its $2,000 refinance cashback offer on 30 June. In comparison to the other big four banks, ANZ is the only one to still have an active cashback offer while Commonwealth Bank and Westpac ended theirs in May and June respectively.
“It’s not the first time we have pulled out of market, but we are happy that we did that because we prefer to compete on service and other components of the proposition,” said Triandos.
“We are in a market where we are seeing a lot of customers coming off fixed rates, so we have got a great retention team at NAB that proactively call customers quite early in the conversation and support the broker and customer around fixed rates.”
And it seems to be working, with around 85% of these customers who are rolling off fixed rates remaining with NAB, according to the webinar.
“We know customers and brokers value our offering. Brokers are an important part of that conversation, we recognise that, but we also are doing a lot in that space to support brokers in having that conversation,” Triandos said.
Another positive indicator for NAB Broker was that its net promoter score (NPS) was in positive territory at +38. This is around the industry average for the customer satisfaction measure.
Despite uncertainties in the economic outlook, which was explained further by the economists later in the webinar, Triandos expressed optimism about the competitive and complex lending environment.
“We've never seen such a competitive lending environment. From our perspective, we are open for business across all customer segments,” Triandos said.
Highlighting NAB's strong commitment to the broker channel, Triandos revealed that 62% of the bank's new flow came through brokers and that together there was a “huge opportunity” to engage customers throughout their financial journey.
“We are in a very complex environment and helping customers navigate through that is critical,” Triandos said. “It’s not only at the acquisition stage but also at the retention. I know a lot of brokers that are playing into that retention and customer management space.”
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