"There will only be a certain percentage of people willing to do that"
Lenders are increasingly moving towards a model that leans primarily on technology and online applications, but one of New Zealand’s ‘fully digital’ non-banks says it is still important to be tailored, and to be ‘fully accessible’ to advisers and customers in a variety of formats.
Prospa New Zealand managing director Adrienne Begbie (pictured) noted that Prospa’s model is built for efficiency and speed, and so relies heavily on digital decision making and online portals. However, she said the model is ultimately set up to work in whatever way is most convenient for the advisers and customers, and if that means picking up the phone and talking through a deal, then that option is very much available.
“We work with a lot of intermediaries,” Begbie said.
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“We’ve built a portal specifically for our advisers, we do a lot on social media, we do blogs, etc., and our aim is to enhance the adviser’s core business to include business lending.”
“We work with a lot of mortgage and insurance advisers, and we try to make that process of interacting with us as simple as we can,” she explained.
“We don’t actually need advisers to collate forms and applications and send them to us, all we need is that name and phone number. And we’ll take that in any format - through a call, a text, an email - whatever is easiest for the advisers, so that they’re able to quickly refer their customers to us.
“We’re very tailored, so we’re able to interact with advisers in any format that works for them. And because they then don’t have to do so much work, it makes the whole process very simple.”
Begbie said that Prospa is looking to add AI capabilities to its business, which will further enhance the speed and efficiency of its application processing. However, she said that Prospa also deals with businesses who prefer one-on-one conversations, and ultimately, it is important to remain a “partner” for every borrower.
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“We do use technology to make decisions, and we’re actually building platforms where we can incorporate AI to do the processing for a large percentage of the business,” Begbie said.
“But it’ll never be the whole business - there will only be a certain percentage of people that will be willing to do that. There will always be those who do want to deal with people, so it’s important that we can still talk to people over the phone, talk about the deal, and ask them what they want to do.”
