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North West Finance founder Bill Knighton has credited a persistent focus on client experience as the foundation for the continued success of his Western Australian broking business.
Writing 80% residential and 20% commercial and asset finance, North West Finance has grown out of servicing remote north-west towns of WA, including Broome, Karratha and Kununurra.
Knighton said that in the past 12 months there had been a real business focus on improving workflows “and ensuring that we offer a consistent experience across our points of representation”.
“The end goal is a seamless experience for our clients,” Knighton told Australian Broker.
The business introduced software platform Broker Engine in partnership with AFG, so it could offer a professional contact point, in particular through client portals and data collection.
“We have also introduced Sherlok to assist us to continue to monitor our existing customers’ loan rates and provide a tangible real benefit to them on a proactive basis,” Knighton said.
Knighton said this has resulted in “astounding” interest savings in excess of $1 million.
North West Finance has been growing its business in Perth for several years, and now has a Perth office. This was initially to provide service to customers won in the north of the state.
“The push into Perth follows many of our customers moving back to the city as their lives change and we can actively support them there now as well,” Knighton said.
Knighton said the business was helping slightly more customers than the last financial year, despite “cost-of-living pressures, increasing prices and continued high interest rates”.
“As a result, the business is generally doing well, I think mainly due to our customer focus and ability to identify the policy niches from our wide range of lenders.”
Part of North West Finance’s business is being driven by advertising. The now eight-person business is still advertising extensively, and has been doing so since its inception 25 years ago.
The firm also revamped its website to “emulate our face-to-face experience”, Knighton said, which involves removing customer nervousness and presenting as stress-free and non-bank.
However Knighton said the biggest driver of businesses was always excellent customer service.
“By far the best driver is word of mouth from our happy customers and pleasingly many of those are active advocates,” Knighton said.
“We are now in our 25th year; our mantra is ‘looking after people, not accounts’, and we live that every time, every day.”
North West Finance’s brokers are the key to providing this experience for customers.
“The key to our success is without doubt, our great people who care about our customers. You need talented brokers and support staff and we have those in spades.”
North West Finance faces some challenges in servicing the region, including what Knighton calls the ever-changing appetite of lenders who are not represented there.
“We are limited by many lenders with restrictions that don’t apply in metropolitan areas like LVR caps, non-recognition of rental income in some mining towns and a general poor understanding of FIFO and site allowances by some lenders,” Knighton said.
“We constantly try to educate the banks in these areas, but most are unwilling to look at policy exceptions for what we think are commonplace issues. Obviously, we are not on our own in this regard, and we realise that many brokers would face similar issues.”
Following the North West Finance business winning AFG’s WA Regional Broker of the Year Award for 2024, Knighton (pictured above right with CommBank third party banking state manager Ben Walker) said the business would continue to innovate in 2025.
“We will keep evolving and staying as proactive as we can, but never remove our focus from the client experience as that has to be number one.”
