Brokers fire up after dramatic rate cuts

Jane Slack-Smith, director of Investors Choice Mortgages, said she had almost immediate success when she tweeted about the Commonwealth Bank rate cut on Tuesday.

Two clients emailed her after seeing the tweet, with one asking to be switched to the Commonwealth Bank five-year rate.

Ms Slack-Smith told The Adviser that she took advantage of the opportunity to have a full mortgage review with the client.

She said although the fixed-rate cuts had given brokers a great excuse to contact clients, that didn’t mean they couldn’t also use the chance to discuss other things such as variable rate options and financial goals.

Rise High Financial Services posted news of the triple rate cut on its Facebook and Twitter accounts yesterday.

Director Marissa Schulze said the Adelaide firm also planned to phone clients who may be looking to refinance or to switch internally from variable to fixed rates.

“It’s a very, very attractive reason to get in touch with clients. It’s a really good news story that you can go out there and promote to your clients,” she said.

Zobel director Andrew Zobel said he was wary of bombarding clients with communications so it was pleasing that the rate cuts had provided such a credible reason to re-engage with them.

He said it was particularly relevant because clients had been contacting Zobel during the past six months to discuss the merits of fixed versus variable rates.

He advised brokers not to get too creative with marketing news of the triple rate cut because something so big would sell itself.

Meanwhile, ANZ would not be drawn on whether it would respond to Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac with rate cuts of its own.

“We regularly review our fixed-rate home loans to ensure they’re competitive for our customers,” a spokesperson told The Adviser.

[Related: Fierce competition forcing banks to cut rates]