A major bank has followed its launch of commission changes with announcements of rate cuts and a new broker referral program.
Westpac general manager mortgage distribution Tony MacRae yesterday
announced that the bank would make permanent a 10bp volume incentive it has had in place for the past six months. MacRae said the lender would also add a 5bp conversion incentive, with the changes due to take effect from the 1st of March. Now MacRae has told Australian Broker the bank will launch a new referral program for brokers.
"I think this is an industry first. We've been looking at our portfolio of mortgage customers, and particularly the broker-introduced customers, and there's a whole heap of customers who have been with us for some time now. Those customers have run down the size of their debt, and are now eligible to be able to get top-ups if they want to do renovations, or might be able to do another loan. In February we're going to start passing out leads to brokers so that they can talk to those customers knowing that they're able to get additional lending from Westpac," MacRae said.
MacRae said the housing market was "buoyant", and that competition between lenders had increased, both for the business of brokers and borrowers. With this in mind, he said the bank would also unveil additional discounts for borrowers.
"That's why from Monday, 3 February, we'll be looking to introduce some new discounts off our SVR on our Premium Advantage Package. So for deals between $250,000 and $750,000, it will be an automatic discount of 0.9%, and then for deals over $750,000 there will be a 1% discount for customers for new lending."
For the full interview with Tony MacRae, CLICK HERE
