Bankwest: still the biggest lender outside the big four

This commitment has recently helped us succeed in lending to customers with larger deposits, and larger equities, through the introduction of our Complete Home Loan Package for investors and owner-occupiers.

This exciting product and other progressive initiatives have seen Bankwest enjoy the highest volume of broker business of any lender outside the big four. We view this as a great privilege and we guard against complacency, which is why we continuously seek out, listen to, and value the feedback of our broker network – in particular, finding out where Bankwest performs strongly and where we can improve.

It is this open and honest partnership that continues to help Bankwest perform strongly. In particular, six months of workshops and forums with brokers shaped strategic decisions around the Complete Home Loan Package that have lead to this product accounting for one third of all new sales and an incredible 11 per cent increase in volumes.

This is because the features that we built into the product, as a result of this consultation, are attracting both the growing investor market and those customers looking for a competitive interest rate and the flexibility to design their own banking package.

Just as we listen to and value broker feedback, so our broker network values the quality, experience and responsiveness of our partnership managers in return.

We know that brokers appreciate the timeliness of our update processes and to further strengthen our relationship with them, we are increasing our number of desk-based business development managers supporting our brokers, ensuring they have a local contact to help get their deals to approval and settlement.

Brokers also like the speed of our updates, so we have continuously enhanced our web chat service, allowing broker updates over the web in a very short amount of time. This kind of ongoing support, coupled with innovation, continually delivers terrific benefits for brokers and customers alike.

Ultimately, we understand the importance and value of our strong relationship with the broker channel, and as a result of this have even made changes to commission trails to benefit brokers’ businesses.

And this is just what we have introduced so far. As head of retail brokers, I believe it is important for Bankwest to continue enhancing the relationship we have with the broker channel, and personally, I would like to thank all our broker partners for their ongoing support.

Ian Rakhit is the head of brokers at Bankwest