Credit union expands broker channel reach

The credit union said that while it exclusively sold mortgages through its proprietary team in Victoria until recently, it has now expanded its push into Victoria with 600 brokers from its aggregator partner, PLAN.

It added that it has planned on further growth in the future.

People’s Choice said that it has developed a strategy to attract brokers and members, including a time to decision of 48 hours (which it said is a new industry benchmark), a dedicated support team located in Melbourne, and a new broker portal to enable brokers to interact with the credit union.

Commenting on the launch into Victoria, People’s Choice chief member officer Maria-Ann Camilleri said: “We see Victoria, and particularly Melbourne’s west, as a huge growth market for us, and brokers will provide a significant addition to our existing lending capacity.

“We’ve grown our residential lending portfolio with our own lenders faster than industry averages over the past few years, but we recognise that many people prefer to use a broker, so that’s the opportunity we want to seize.”

She added: “We’ve done an incredible amount of work behind the scenes to get our time-to-decision down to just 48 hours, and we’ve done it because we want to show brokers in Melbourne and across Victoria that we’re very serious about supporting them.”

Ms Camilleri also said that the organisation’s expansion of broker relationships in Victoria has come after its previous expansion with brokers in the Northern Territory, which she said was successful.

“Obviously, Darwin and Melbourne are not the same, so we’ve taken the learnings from the Territory and – with a lot of input from brokers in Victoria – we’ve put together what we believe is a very competitive offering,” she said.

“And we’re here, on the ground, in Melbourne, to provide end-to-end support.”

People’s Choice has $9.5 billion in total assets, and more than 385,000 members.

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