On the back of being the first non-major to win Money magazine’s Consumer Finance Bank of the Year award,
Suncorp Bank has revealed its plans to further enhance its service offering for both consumers and brokers over the next quarter.
Speaking to
Australian Broker, Steven Degetto, head of intermediaries for Suncorp Bank says the non-major has recently completed a mortgage process review – based on feedback from brokers – which will guide improvements to its product and service offering over the next quarter.
As a result, the non-major has announced plans to update its upfront valuation process.
“We are getting ready to enhance and automate the upfront valuation process,” Degetto said.
“Valuations are one of the items that have the opportunity to cause some uncertainty for people. If you can make that valuation upfront and take out that uncertainty, then from a lender perspective, a broker perspective and a customer perspective it is going to be a smoother process.”
As well as enhancing its upfront valuation process, Suncorp will also be enhancing its post approval service. According to Degetto, the lender will be launching DocuPREP, which will give brokers greater visibility to transactions post approval.
The broker head also announced that the non-major has plans to launch an enhanced broker awards program.
“We already have a rewards program for our top tier of supporters,” he said. “However there are a whole bunch of other brokers that may not reach that top tier, but they are still really great supporters of ours and provide good levels of high quality business. We want to reward those guys and look after those brokers as well.”
Finally, Degetto spoke about plans to break into small business and commercial lending through the broker channel.
“Robynne Frost –who has been with our team as our national aggregation manager for three years – has taken up the role as national manager for small business and commercial, and she is currently putting together a small team of BDMs for this. It will be the same sort of approach [as our home lending] – it is competitive products and genuine service.
“At first, it will be about working with the aggregator groups that we already have on board and doing really a soft launch, so we can really understand the market better and learn what brokers are looking for. Then we will look to expand on that.”
Speaking of Suncorp’s Money magazine Consumer Finance Bank of the Year win, Degetto says it came down to their genuine connection with consumers.
“Customers are looking for competitive offers. They are looking for great product offerings and they are looking for a business that they can ultimately trust,” he told
Australian Broker.
“We think we are really well positioned as the genuine alternative to the majors. We are a top 20 Australian company and are really in a strong position to be able to leverage the strength and the capability of the group, but at the same time remain connected to customers… being smaller than the majors allows us to be more nimble and makes it easier to have a stronger connection with our customers.”
