Westpac responds to brokers' concerns featured in last month’s MPA Brokers on Banks survey
When we're asked what Brokers on Banks is for, the first answer is easy: it celebrates those banks who work best with brokers and their customers. But unlike an award ceremony, the feedback you give banks in this survey isn’t just positive; you tell the banks how they can improve.
As Westpac’s Tony MacRae told MPA “We really enjoy getting involved in surveys like this, because it gives us a direct feedback mechanism and for the last three years we’ve taken very much a process of ‘broker said…therefore we need to do …’ ”
That’s what Banks on Brokers is all about: finding out what the banks are going to do with your feedback. We’ve talked to this year’s top five banks, based on overall score: Westpac, CBA, ANZ, Suncorp and Macquarie. The reason we talked to them – rather than the bottom five – is because these banks are the ones who are evidently at the forefront of innovation in the broker channel; we want to know how they’re going to make their service even better, whilst dealing with areas of weakness.
All of the questions in the following interviews are based on your feedback, and many questions are related to the individual scores of banks in different categories of service. However, where we feel an issue goes beyond a single bank we’ve asked all the banks about that issue. For example, two-thirds of Brokers on Banks respondents told us the banks didn’t deal with APRA’s changes in a fair way for new and existing customers; therefore we’ve asked the banks how they plan to communicate changes better in future. We’ve also asked the banks about how they deal with channel conflict.
1 Bank of the Year
WESTPAC BANK
Major structural changes at the BDM level and in management have helped Westpac hold the number one spot, explains Tony MacRae, general manager third party distribution at Westpac and St George Banking Group
MPA: Would you say the past year has been business as usual? Or have you made further changes you think have contributed to keeping the top spot?
TONY MACRAE: In this industry we’ve always got to be evolving and growing. Business as usual would mean you get overtaken. We’ve done a number of things, particularly in the last 12 months; the first one is to reshape and have a very clear vision and purpose, and that’s simply to be the bank that puts more Australians into homes, allowing them to live a full life today and into retirement.
We’ve structured everything around putting more Australians into homes, and that’s investing in more people, both in the front office through BDMs, but also in the back office, in our processes, in our technology to allow brokers to get access and easily know where their loans are up to, and we’ll continue to do that over time. We’ll continue to look at how to structure our internal teams so they know our brokers better and we’ll be able to provide a much higher level of service to them, day-in, day-out.
MPA: When you talk about internal teams, do you mean having a single point of contact for the broker?
TM: We’ve spent the last 12 months, from a BDM perspective, looking at how we can better structure ourselves. From being purely local based, we’ve gone to aggregator models, where BDMs ‘own’ aggregator groups; they get much closer to the aggregator, they understand the issues that the aggregator has, because they’re dealing with that aggregator day-in, day-out, and can be far more responsive.
On the back office front we’re in the process of moving our credit teams to align to particular broker groups in localities, so that they don’t talk to someone one day and have someone completely different the next.
MPA: Westpac came first on turnaround times, which brokers said are their top priority. How do you maintain excellent turnaround times, especially when non-vanilla scenarios are involved?
TM: It all kicks off with ensuring how you allocate the work, and ensuring the work gets allocated to the right level of person as quickly as possible, so the right person can review it and get decisions with minimal handoffs – that’s the key. There’s a lot of work that goes into this, both from our BDMs and brokers, to ensure the quality of the submissions are the highest possible so we don’t have to go back and ask for more information.
MPA: So, how do you ensure high quality submissions – through educating brokers or putting systems in place?
TM: It’s educating the brokers, going back to them and talking to them about where we may not have got all of the information, so next time we get it right. We’ve also set up some tests, where we were working with specific broker groups, and we have a dedicated team in our Adelaide operations centre that is specifically focused on educating new brokers that are using us for the first or second time through that process so they come up to speed much, much quicker and get great outcomes for them and their customer.
MPA: Westpac’s Platinum Brokers are clearly very happy with the service Westpac provides. How can you reassure non-platinum brokers that they also will receive a good level of service, and that resources won’t be diverted away from them?
TM: We continue to grow our Platinum segment, and it’s not just about bringing in new guys from outside of our network, it’s about working closely with brokers who use us today and working with them so they meet minimum standards that Platinum requires. That’s a key part of our BDM role – helping brokers grow and expand their business to be able to provide that service.
We’re also over the next 10-12 months going to lay down a challenge: how do we lift our minimum standards to the highest possible level? Then we’ll look to expand what we can offer in the Platinum space; ensuring our customers get a great level of service and 24-hour turnaround time will be absolutely key on our agenda over the next 12 months.
MPA: 77% of respondents believed channel conflict is still a problem; what is Westpac doing, in terms of staff training and formal structures, to prevent this happening?
TM: The first thing here is that customer choice is absolutely paramount. Customers choose the channel that they want to do their home lending or general financial services through, and our whole model is about respecting customer choice, whether through our proprietary channel, or the broker business.
To ensure we eliminate conflict, we spend a lot of time and effort ensuring that our brokers know our people in the first party channel and ensuring our first party channel and brokers work hand-in-hand together. We hold functions in our branches where we invite brokers and their customers along. Plus one of our BDMs’ KPIs is to ensure they’re spending a minimum amount of time in a branch every week, educating the branch staff about brokers and ensuring they’re able to help them.
It comes down to what I said before, that simple philosophy that we want the branches to see the brokers as an extension of their sales force and the brokers to see the branches as an extension of their operation.
MPA: Two-thirds of brokers didn’t believe the banks dealt with APRA’s changes in a fair way for new and existing customers. Are there any lessons to be learnt in how you communicate interest and policy changes in the future?
TM: We’re happy to see the attention that the regulators are putting on the home loan origination process and parts of our industry. I think it helps us grow, it helps us become a more sustainable and robust business. Last year was a year with a particularly high volume of changes, and we were all moving quickly and reacting, and in those environments we can all learn. In terms of communicating the ‘why’ and positioning in a more robust way is an opportunity for all of us. Having said that, I think banks in general have done a really strong job in managing in an environment of significant change.
MPA: Will Westpac be making any major investments or restructuring to keep the number one spot next year?
TM: We’ve just recently brought all of our brands under the one management structure. That gives us a really great opportunity to be able to take the best of all our brands and incorporate that across. We really want to keep the key differences, because brands matter, and we really want to keep the distinctive flavours of each of those brands, but there are some great learnings that we can translate from brand to brand.
We also want to invest in technology; it’s a really key point for us. Ensuring that we can get information in a clear, concise and timely manner into the hands of brokers and customers will be absolutely key over the next 12 months.
Then looking to ensure our products are up-to-date, appropriately positioned and they fulfil the needs of customers will always be a key focus.
As Westpac’s Tony MacRae told MPA “We really enjoy getting involved in surveys like this, because it gives us a direct feedback mechanism and for the last three years we’ve taken very much a process of ‘broker said…therefore we need to do …’ ”
That’s what Banks on Brokers is all about: finding out what the banks are going to do with your feedback. We’ve talked to this year’s top five banks, based on overall score: Westpac, CBA, ANZ, Suncorp and Macquarie. The reason we talked to them – rather than the bottom five – is because these banks are the ones who are evidently at the forefront of innovation in the broker channel; we want to know how they’re going to make their service even better, whilst dealing with areas of weakness.
All of the questions in the following interviews are based on your feedback, and many questions are related to the individual scores of banks in different categories of service. However, where we feel an issue goes beyond a single bank we’ve asked all the banks about that issue. For example, two-thirds of Brokers on Banks respondents told us the banks didn’t deal with APRA’s changes in a fair way for new and existing customers; therefore we’ve asked the banks how they plan to communicate changes better in future. We’ve also asked the banks about how they deal with channel conflict.
1 Bank of the YearWESTPAC BANK
Major structural changes at the BDM level and in management have helped Westpac hold the number one spot, explains Tony MacRae, general manager third party distribution at Westpac and St George Banking Group
MPA: Would you say the past year has been business as usual? Or have you made further changes you think have contributed to keeping the top spot?
TONY MACRAE: In this industry we’ve always got to be evolving and growing. Business as usual would mean you get overtaken. We’ve done a number of things, particularly in the last 12 months; the first one is to reshape and have a very clear vision and purpose, and that’s simply to be the bank that puts more Australians into homes, allowing them to live a full life today and into retirement.
We’ve structured everything around putting more Australians into homes, and that’s investing in more people, both in the front office through BDMs, but also in the back office, in our processes, in our technology to allow brokers to get access and easily know where their loans are up to, and we’ll continue to do that over time. We’ll continue to look at how to structure our internal teams so they know our brokers better and we’ll be able to provide a much higher level of service to them, day-in, day-out.
MPA: When you talk about internal teams, do you mean having a single point of contact for the broker?TM: We’ve spent the last 12 months, from a BDM perspective, looking at how we can better structure ourselves. From being purely local based, we’ve gone to aggregator models, where BDMs ‘own’ aggregator groups; they get much closer to the aggregator, they understand the issues that the aggregator has, because they’re dealing with that aggregator day-in, day-out, and can be far more responsive.
On the back office front we’re in the process of moving our credit teams to align to particular broker groups in localities, so that they don’t talk to someone one day and have someone completely different the next.
MPA: Westpac came first on turnaround times, which brokers said are their top priority. How do you maintain excellent turnaround times, especially when non-vanilla scenarios are involved?
TM: It all kicks off with ensuring how you allocate the work, and ensuring the work gets allocated to the right level of person as quickly as possible, so the right person can review it and get decisions with minimal handoffs – that’s the key. There’s a lot of work that goes into this, both from our BDMs and brokers, to ensure the quality of the submissions are the highest possible so we don’t have to go back and ask for more information.
MPA: So, how do you ensure high quality submissions – through educating brokers or putting systems in place?
TM: It’s educating the brokers, going back to them and talking to them about where we may not have got all of the information, so next time we get it right. We’ve also set up some tests, where we were working with specific broker groups, and we have a dedicated team in our Adelaide operations centre that is specifically focused on educating new brokers that are using us for the first or second time through that process so they come up to speed much, much quicker and get great outcomes for them and their customer.
MPA: Westpac’s Platinum Brokers are clearly very happy with the service Westpac provides. How can you reassure non-platinum brokers that they also will receive a good level of service, and that resources won’t be diverted away from them?
TM: We continue to grow our Platinum segment, and it’s not just about bringing in new guys from outside of our network, it’s about working closely with brokers who use us today and working with them so they meet minimum standards that Platinum requires. That’s a key part of our BDM role – helping brokers grow and expand their business to be able to provide that service.
We’re also over the next 10-12 months going to lay down a challenge: how do we lift our minimum standards to the highest possible level? Then we’ll look to expand what we can offer in the Platinum space; ensuring our customers get a great level of service and 24-hour turnaround time will be absolutely key on our agenda over the next 12 months.
MPA: 77% of respondents believed channel conflict is still a problem; what is Westpac doing, in terms of staff training and formal structures, to prevent this happening?
TM: The first thing here is that customer choice is absolutely paramount. Customers choose the channel that they want to do their home lending or general financial services through, and our whole model is about respecting customer choice, whether through our proprietary channel, or the broker business.
To ensure we eliminate conflict, we spend a lot of time and effort ensuring that our brokers know our people in the first party channel and ensuring our first party channel and brokers work hand-in-hand together. We hold functions in our branches where we invite brokers and their customers along. Plus one of our BDMs’ KPIs is to ensure they’re spending a minimum amount of time in a branch every week, educating the branch staff about brokers and ensuring they’re able to help them.
It comes down to what I said before, that simple philosophy that we want the branches to see the brokers as an extension of their sales force and the brokers to see the branches as an extension of their operation.
MPA: Two-thirds of brokers didn’t believe the banks dealt with APRA’s changes in a fair way for new and existing customers. Are there any lessons to be learnt in how you communicate interest and policy changes in the future?
TM: We’re happy to see the attention that the regulators are putting on the home loan origination process and parts of our industry. I think it helps us grow, it helps us become a more sustainable and robust business. Last year was a year with a particularly high volume of changes, and we were all moving quickly and reacting, and in those environments we can all learn. In terms of communicating the ‘why’ and positioning in a more robust way is an opportunity for all of us. Having said that, I think banks in general have done a really strong job in managing in an environment of significant change.
MPA: Will Westpac be making any major investments or restructuring to keep the number one spot next year?
TM: We’ve just recently brought all of our brands under the one management structure. That gives us a really great opportunity to be able to take the best of all our brands and incorporate that across. We really want to keep the key differences, because brands matter, and we really want to keep the distinctive flavours of each of those brands, but there are some great learnings that we can translate from brand to brand.
We also want to invest in technology; it’s a really key point for us. Ensuring that we can get information in a clear, concise and timely manner into the hands of brokers and customers will be absolutely key over the next 12 months.
Then looking to ensure our products are up-to-date, appropriately positioned and they fulfil the needs of customers will always be a key focus.
