The Head of Third Party at CBA has revealed how Australia’s biggest bank are embracing innovation and helping the broker channel to come along with them.
CBA has invested heavily in their backend support in the last 12 months in an attempt to drive down turnaround times for the broker channel. The news comes fresh on the back of their announcement of a new strategy in for third party partners earlier this week.
“We’re certainly embarking on a new world, as far as what we can do from a digital aspect,” said Adam Croucher, Head of Third Party at CBA. “A lot of investment over the next 12 to 18 months is going into the simplification of applications and integration and utilisation of comprehensive credit reporting (CCR), are all going to help impact on faster turnaround times and delivering key changes.”
“We are on that journey of making sure that we lead the change around digitalisation. I think what brokers can expect from us is that we will make sure that we deliver ahead of our peers, as much as we possibly can in a safe nature, looking at what and how we can help customers and how we can help customers to do business with us.”
“For us, the fundamentals are making sure that ‘doing business easier’ is right at the front end.”
“Whether that means less documentation that we can use CCR for more in making a credit decision is paramount, but also it means we’re staring into eligibility for self-employed customers who pay themselves a salary from their business not needing to provide comprehensive company or personal financials that were previously required.”
“It means utilising more of the information that we have.”
CBA are also putting effort into helping broker education and improving their knowledge of how the bank works.
“We’ve also designed webinar for brokers to support their understanding of our self-employed customer changes as well,” said Croucher.
“The constant education and training is a real key focus for us. We’ve put on, in our recent restructure and growth of the channel, some credit training people to sit with brokers and make sure that they understand the changes that we’re making, whether it be accessing money via redraw, restructuring your home loan debt or switching to fixed rate home loans.”
“We’re just making sure that we can, as changes happen, make sure that our brokers come on that journey and are educated and trained as best we can, which is really the investment.”
“There’s no use making a lot of changes if we can’t execute and get our brokers on that journey with us.”
