Teacher's Mutual Bank: mutual provides unique opportunity for brokers

sector and their families first for almost 50 years, with an unparalleled focus on, and understanding of, their financial needs.

Teachers Mutual Bank continues to strengthen its position in the market. With a membership of over 170,000 and more than $5 billion in assets, we continue to deliver strong financial results year-on-year. Our impressive home loan growth over the last two years can be attributed to our entry to the third-party channel.

After entering the broker market in November 2013, Teachers Mutual Bank has experienced remarkable growth; we have partnered with 10 aggregators to date and have recently surpassed 1,300 accredited brokers across Australia. We see enormous value in the third-party distribution channel. As a remote service model with a limited branch network, the broker network has expanded Teachers Mutual Bank’s national presence and increased our reach across Australia.

One of the key reasons we have been successful in the third-party channel is because we offer our brokers a unique opportunity to target an attractive niche in the market with our personalised products and services.

Teachers Mutual Bank also consistently delivers highly competitive home loan rates, paired with great product features, such as a free 100 per cent mortgage offset facility available on both fixed and variable home loans. As a mutual bank, we are easily able to compete on price as we do not have to pay dividends to shareholders. Instead our profits are invested back into the bank and into the education sector.

We make our members and our brokers the top priority and this is reflected in our satisfaction scores. Teachers Mutual Bank’s member satisfaction rate seldom drops below 90 per cent and we regularly appear at the top of the Roy Morgan national customer satisfaction poll. In fact, this year we have won six out of a possible eight ‘Bank of the Month’ titles for satisfaction.

Satisfying our third-party partners is just as important and we pride ourselves on offering a personalised service to each broker. We know speed is critical so Teachers Mutual Bank guarantees a 2448hour turnaround time on all applications. Our dedicated broker team continues to grow to meet the demand and we now have support staff on the ground in four states across Australia.

We have strong ties to our community and to ethical values. Earlier this year Teachers Mutual Bank was named on Ethisphere’s 2015 list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies, for the second year running. This was an incredible achievement as we were one of only two Australian companies to make the prestigious list. We are also leading the way in community investment. Last year we achieved a community investment rate of 4.55 per cent of pre-tax profits, as measured by the independent London Benchmarking Group (LBG). This equates to an investment of $1.67 million and is more than nine times higher than the LBG average for Australia and New Zealand.

The financial services industry can seem crowded at times but Teacher's Mutual Bank is able to stand out with highly competitive products, ethically sound lending policies and unparalleled focus on the education sector and their funding.