We sit down with Grant Roden, executive manager of operations in home-buying distribution at Bankwest, to discuss the bank’s transition to a digital-first model and its unwavering commitment to the broker channel
Q. Bankwest recently pivoted to become a digital bank. How has this redefined your identity in the lending landscape?
We’ve always been massive supporters of brokers since the industry began almost three decades ago. I think what the transformation has allowed us to do is invest heavily in digital tools for brokers and their customers and really just narrow our focus to be the best broker bank in Australia.
Just over 90 per cent of our flow comes from broker channel, so we know this strategy is working.
Q. You have an ambitious goal of being the number one lender for brokers. What are you doing to achieve that?
I call it the four Ps: people, process, policy, and price. But the key behind that is people and always has been. We invest heavily in our people to be able to provide the solutions to our brokers and to the broker market.
Q. How are you ensuring you’re delivering what brokers want?
We have a ‘Built by Brokers’ research program where multiple things are being built off the back of broker engagement. We engage brokers depending on what we’re looking to build and what we’re looking to provide for our brokers. Every year, we take on feedback and think about how we can make it work.
When we’re researching policies and looking at what type of solutions we can offer to the market, for example, our one-year Self-Employed Policy was based on feedback, we engaged brokers on what it should look like and how we could make it safe, but also drive some business. Our Expat Policy is another one where we engaged a lot of brokers who play in that space.
Then we take that sort of research and information back to our policy teams, and we start to engage and see where we can build something out.
I think brokers are at the heart of everything that we try and build.
Q. How is broker feedback helping you develop broker technology?
We built DocBox where you can go into our Broker Portal safely, securely, and rapidly upload documents, which instantly hit a file, and therefore, our assessors can get into the deal a lot quicker.
That was the first evolution of it. We’re now continuing to build on that and see how we can make it more intuitive. So that way, it might pick up what the actual application is and only ask for those documents as opposed to a generic checklist. It’s been really good, and we’re hoping to continue to evolve on it.
Q. You are also aiming for unconditional approval on simple loans within 24 hours. How do you plan to hit that target?
We do have an ambitious goal of having 50 per cent of all of our loans approved within 24 hours. It all comes down to the investment. We’re looking at different ways all of our teams operate every week. Not only looking at what we offer to our BDMs and BSMs, but also our assessors, our validators, our credit teams, and what we can do in that space to make it easier. For example, do we have to make our processes easier for them to be able to process a loan easier? Do we make our policies easier? These are all the conversations that we start to have.
If all the information is on file, they’re getting through them very, very quickly.
Q. If a broker needs to talk to someone regarding a complex deal, what does the support structure look like?
Every broker gets a BDM [business development manager]. Not only a BDM, but a BSM, so a broker support manager. We’ve also got CQMs, so our credit quality managers. We’ve also got our MST line [mortgage support team], and we’re transitioning to digital chat because we just find it’s a much easier and quicker way for brokers to get the answers they need.
Q. Retention is huge for brokers. How do you handle repricing and the threat of the proprietary channel?
A broker can reprice their customer through the Broker Portal, and one of the things we understand is that if we offer a rate, we’re not going to undercut it if a discharge comes in. We won’t undercut that within 90 days of that approval if we do receive a discharge.
Q. What would you say to brokers who haven’t used Bankwest recently?
Call your BDM. In all honesty, you’ve got the best BDMs in the market. We’ve got great solutions for a whole range of customers and more stuff still to come. We’re not sitting still.
Tune in to hear more!
You can find out more about how Bankwest is supporting brokers as a digital bank in The Adviser’s In Focus podcast, out now:
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