ANZ has been quite transparent about its plans to take a bigger share of the mortgage market. The bank’s incoming chief executive Shayne Elliott flagged a more aggressive push into mortgages in a recent Fairfax interview. And this push largely relies on buy-in from brokers. The bank’s full-year results showed brokers accounted for 48% of the loans settled through the bank in FY15. That was a slight increase on the 47% coming through the channel the year before.
ANZ head of third party relationship channels, Keiran Evans, said the push to capture more third party business call comes back to customers.
“Everything we do is about the customer. Our catch cry is ‘helping brokers help the customer’,” he said.
Evans said there was a consumer-led shift toward brokers, and the third party proposition was increasingly attractive to consumers. And this means the bank must make sure its own proposition to the third party is clear, Evans suggested.
With this in mind, Evans said ANZ has focused strongly on its BDM team.
“We’ve expanded our BDM salesforce significantly. We’ve trained our BDMs not just in product knowledge, but in listening skills and in presentation skills. It’s all enabling them to better communicate with brokers,” he said.
This communication means the bank must be sensitive to broker feedback, Evans said. He highlighted the importance of listening to brokers’ needs and concerns, and addressing them.
“It’s about removing roadblocks; hearing what the issues are and then addressing those issues. That filters down from myself through to the state managers and BDMs. We all go out and talk to brokers, listen to them and take their suggestions,” Evans said. “That comes back to having BDMs skilled in communicating what ANZ delivers to customers. It’s about making sure brokers are fully informed as to ANZ’s offer.”
State-based push
New South Wales is a market of particular focus for ANZ. Shayne Elliott told Fairfax the bank would look to grow more aggressively in the state.
“We used to joke we were the number five bank of four in NSW, which is true, and it's not just Sydney, it's right across the state. NSW is one of our priorities,” he told Fairfax, noting that the other majors and
Westpac subsidiary St George outperformed ANZ in NSW. Evans said this means a specific focus on NSW brokers, as the bank’s branch network is not as strong in the state as its major bank rivals.
“In the proprietary sense, our footprint is not as big in NSW, and that is something we as a bank want to remedy. Dealing with brokers has enabled us to get a jumpstart, and now be positioned as number one or two in market share with each of the major aggregators in NSW,” Evans said.
One of the ways ANZ is looking to continue to grow in the market is through strategic recruitment of BDMs, Evans said.#pb#
“It’s no secret that there’s a large Asian demographic in Sydney, so we’ve recruited multilingual BDMs, and that works really well with brokers in that area,” Evans said.
This is a market that makes sense for ANZ, Evans indicated. With the bank’s reach beyond Australia’s borders, it already has high brand visibility in some of the overseas markets bringing investors to Australia.
“One of our strengths is we are a super-regional bank. We have a great presence in Asia. So it’s about matching those super-regional capabilities with boots on the ground in Australia,” Evans said.
Improving the process
Evans said the bank has also worked hard to streamline processes and tighten turnaround times through a number of technological improvements. He pointed to electronic delivery of letters of offer and security documents, as well as the ability for brokers to electronically upload documents.
“We’re getting good feedback from brokers that we’re making their lives easier,” he said.
Evans said the bank’s pricing tools and online loan change request capabilities were also helping brokers deliver better outcomes to customers.
“It’s a quicker decision to brokers and it enhances the customer experience. Everything we do has to be about the end customer and helping brokers deliver to those customers. We have to look at the entire value chain.”
In looking across the value chain, Evans said it also makes sense to deliver value to brokers in the form of continuing education. He said ANZ had been very active in delivering training to brokers, and was continuing to find new ways to add value through education.
“It’s fair to say we’ve had a breakthrough with the webinars we piloted in late July. These webinars have
MFAA and
FBAA accreditation, so brokers receive CPD points,” he said.
Evans said the sessions have had excellent uptake, and delivered training across a range of topics.
“Brokers are really voting with their feet on these. We’re providing a skillset that is resonating with brokers.”
But the skillset isn’t just about enhancing broker business through ANZ, Evans said. He said the bank was delivering training that would help the industry as a whole, and ultimately the end customer.
“Other financiers might have subtly different requirements. Industry training is not just training how to do an ANZ loan. We’re delivering a transferrable skill,” Evans said.
