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A speaker at the upcoming Industry Commercial Masterclass has called it a “unique” event, as different lenders come together to help educate brokers.
The event, organised by the Finance Brokers Association of Australia (FBAA) AND Vow Financial, will be held in Sydney on 26 July and will focus on how to diversify into commercial lending.
Speakers from St George, Suncorp, ING, ThinkTank, Macquarie Leasing and Core Logic will all be presenting.
The day will include training sessions and workshops to help brokers understand the entire “end to end process” of commercial lending.
Malcolm Withers, head of commercial intermediaries at St George, said the day would include everything from identifying and talking to customers to needs analysis and fact finding and then preparing the actual application.
He added, “This is the first time in the industry that we have seen lenders come together to create what the commercial lending process looks like when you deal with business customers.”
The day will explain exactly how mortgage brokers can use their position in talking about home loans to further ask questions about their customers’ businesses.
Withers said, “It’s important when they’re looking at their customers from a holistic view to ask: how do you help them beyond their home loan?
“You’ve got an established relationship and created some ‘wow’ experiences with their home loans, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s about having deeper conversations with those customers about their business.
“If you look at on average, 40% of our brokers’ customers are self-employed, so they’re already talking to business customers.
“In a lot of cases the door’s already open to go back and look at and identify further lending needs that a customer has and work with a bank early and support the customer through the journey as well.”
Speaking to Australian Broker about why St George found it an important day for different groups to be a part of, Withers said it was about the customers.
He said, “We want to help Australian family businesses grow in an ever-changing environment and a part of that is supporting brokers on their journey of understanding.
“We run introduction to commercial training quite a lot for brokers and we support aggregators that deliver that to their brokers to upskill and educate brokers to have that deeper conversation with their customers.
“It’s important that we’re providing and participating in that pathway of education for brokers because the more we support them the more they can help their customers.
“It works very much in partnership: if we have got better educated brokers we have got better supported customers.”
