ANALYSIS -- People power

More than 80 per cent of respondents to a recent The Adviser straw poll said they are either ‘significantly’ or ‘reasonably’ influenced by the quality of the lender BDM support they receive when choosing where to place their business.

Of the 501 respondents, only 17.4 per cent said that a BDM had a minimal impact on which lender with whom they wrote business with.

These broker sentiments were backed by findings from the Third Party Banking Report – Major Lenders published in issue 4.4 of The Adviser.

According to the report, access to BDMs was a clear differentiator of broker attitudes towards the majors’ overall service offering.

For most brokers, the only face-to-face interaction they have with their lender is via their BDM, and this is a significant relationship.

Smartline’s Kevin Lee says brokers expect a lot from their BDMs. However, these expectations were by and large reasonable.

The role of the BDM has evolved from simply addressing and fixing processing issues or delays, he says.

“A good BDM must have a holistic approach to dealing with brokers. Yes, it is important to have a transactional and service focus, but it is also important to provide us with advice on how to improve our business,” Mr Lee says.

Mr Lee also says a good BDM has to be much more than a go-to person to fix problems. They must have a wide range of skills that a broker can draw upon.

This can include revenue diversification strategies, best practice advice, sales and product coaching, business planning, credit coaching, lead generation and relationship development.

“The difference between a good BDM and a great BDM is their willingness to continue their professional development and understand that as the operating environment for brokers is always changing, they too must evolve,” he says.

MORE THAN A TRANSACTION

Absolute Financial Services principal Garry Coxon says there are many talented BDMs who are customer focused and provide consistent service levels. However, the measurement of what makes a good BDM cannot be limited to simply transactional support.

“As brokers, we need our BDMs to be reliable and trustworthy. If they do the right thing by us, we will reward them by placing our business with that particular bank,” Mr Coxon says.

“We need to know that they will answer our calls and return our emails... to give us that bit of extra attention. Our clients want to know how their loan is progressing.

“The best person to help us understand what is happening is our BDM. If we cannot trust them to do that well, we won’t use the bank they represent.”

INCREASED BANK FOCUS

St George is one bank that is currently redefining its BDM support network based on evolving broker needs.

The bank, which was ranked third by brokers in terms of BDM support in The Adviser’s Third Party Banking Report – Major Lenders, hopes to build deeper broker/BDM relationships over the next 12 months.

Commenting on the results of the report, St George’s general manager of third party and specialist distribution Steven Heavey acknowledges that there is a lot to do in order to get broker support levels to where they need to be.

“We took a lot out of the survey,” Mr Heavey says.

“Most especially, we see there is a perception among our brokers that we are not providing them with enough frontline support to run loan scenarios or track the progress of an application.”

Mr Heavey says in the last few months, the bank has concentrated on building its ‘mortgage central’ – a hub of support staff.

“We have taken the unqualified people out of our centres and trained them to become lending professionals by putting them through the Certificate IV,” he says.

“We wanted to give our brokers support staff that knew what they were talking about.”

But despite upgrading its level of BDM support, Mr Heavey says the survey highlighted that the broker channel is unaware that St George has lifted its game.

“It is up to us to build deeper relationships with our brokers," he says.

“It is no good having the best support staff if our broker channel doesn’t know they are there.

“While we have come a long way, we still have a long way to go, and this is something we are going to focus on in the months to come.”