The newly appointed state manager of Bank of Melbourne Mortgage Broking is asking brokers to look at the bank with an open mind in 2014.
Bank of Melbourne, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Westpac, announced Christa Malkin as the bank’s new broker head yesterday.
Malkin’s experience with the broker channel spans seven years at
Bankwest, and she says this background puts her in good stead for her new role.
“I’ve come from a bank that has seen significant challenges within the back-end and getting customers to understand the brand and engage with that brand, so that gives me a really good opportunity and some really good background experience to take into this role.”
Malkin says she is looking forward to hitting the ground running and meeting with as many brokers as possible, “really working closely with the Flame brokers and the Gold brokers that Bank of Melbourne already has, and looking at opportunities in terms of new brokers we can bring into that great service offering”.
“What I’ve seen so far is that Bank of Melbourne has had a few rough patches in terms of how brokers see the service delivery and I think all of that can be overcome with education,” she says.
“Admittedly there may have been back office issues or it may have just been how that’s been represented to market, but the big thing for me is to go in there and really get a solid understanding of how the processes work and be able to get that message out to the market.”
The rapid expansion of Bank of Melbourne throughout Victoria means the bank presents great opportunities for brokers, she says.
“Certainly the few discussions I’ve had with brokers that I have good relationships with show that customers want to look at Bank of Melbourne as an option," said Malkin.
"That for me is really exciting because if customers want to get into a product that Bank of Melbourne offers then it’s just a case of making sure that brokers are fully across products and know how to work within the processes and know about the credit policies.
“My message to the broker market is that Bank of Melbourne is a great brand and is going to continue to be out there and be at the forefront of what your customers are asking for. So despite whatever the misconceptions might be or whatever challenges brokers may have had in past I’d like to go into this role and go into 2014 with brokers being open-minded about looking at the brand again as an opportunity and working with us and giving us the feedback we need to make things better and create those stronger relationships.”
