"Banks are closing down branches, and everyone has seen the backlash from the community"
In the midst of a global pandemic, every mortgage adviser is now well-accustomed to meeting clients through Zoom, and customer service was the topic of the day in NZ Adviser’s first live webinar.
NZ Adviser hosted the webinar yesterday morning, at which its guest panel discussed how to ‘take customer service to the next level’ through technology, new tools and old fashioned face-to-face meetings.
The webinar was hosted by Bluestone and featured Nest Home Loans director Jeff Kerwin, iConsult founder Satyan Mehra and Roost CEO Mark Pullar.
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Commenting on the need for balancing technology with in-person interaction, Jeff Kerwin noted the backlash faced by some major banks who decided to close down their branches earlier in 2020. He said that for Nest Home Loans, the future vision is to have retail branches where customers can interact face-to-face, as this still seems to be a very important piece for property purchasers.
“We certainly see the demand for face-to-face meetings,” Kerwin said.
“For many people, this is the biggest financial transaction that they’re going to conduct in their lifetime, and many of the people we deal with take a lot of comfort in knowing that we are actually real people based in a real office in the town that they operate in.”
“I know the banks are closing down branches, and everyone has seen the backlash from the community about that because they do want that important face-to-face contact with their financial advisers,” he explained.
“So, we are actually franchising, and our vision is to have retail face-to-face offices because we think that there is that demand there in addition to having the technology to do meetings virtually.”
Host and Bluestone CEO Peter Wood noted that many mortgage advisers are now using an online bank statement service called illion, and Kerwin said the service has been a huge help to his business - though some clients took a little more getting used to the new technology than others.
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“We use illion, and we wouldn’t go back now that we’ve used it,” Kerwin said.
“There’s been very little resistance from clients in using it, and on the rare occasion that we have concerns, they’re about putting their bank usernames and passwords into a website that doesn’t belong to the bank.”
“But we can usually get around that by telling the client that the bank is happy with the security of the system, otherwise they wouldn’t have approved their use,” he added.
“So, we’ve certainly had great success with this kind of technology, and we wouldn't go back.”
