Brokers ‘most critical source of growth’ for ING

Speaking to The Adviser after having been in his new role for six weeks, Thompson said that the merger of the home loans business and third-party distribution business aimed to “ensure that [ING] can be best placed to support brokers” and bring that voice of the broker and the BDMs who service them into “the heart of all that we do and the decision makings that exist within the mortgage business”.

He added that he had been travelling the country to meet the different members of the merged tribes and to gauge areas for growth.

As such, his priority for the past few weeks had been to “fundamentally understand the way in which we’re servicing brokers, how we’re providing that experience to them, and then how best place we can be to improve that moving forward”.

Thompson elaborated that he had been meeting with brokers, BDMs, and the pricing and product teams to understand the broader ING Australia ecosystem when it comes to mortgage lending and engage in “effective steering” with employees and partners.

He elaborated: “Effective steering is our way of working and how we govern bottom-up through to top-down. It’s effectively creating a working rhythm that allows this cascade of information in both directions.”

Thompson provided an example of involving BDM feedback in the pricing papers for the balance sheet committee alongside that of the pricing and credit risk team ”to ensure that all of the feedback is curated and integrated in all of the decision making”.

The head of home loans said that he was engaging team members with ways to drive scale and growth and ensure that the bank is able to “support brokers and what they need in terms to be able to write more ING business”.

He revealed that initial feedback had shown that while brokers “want to write more business with ING”, it was up to the bank to now work through its risk appetites and lending segments to identify whether there are any areas in which it may be “under-represented” at the moment.

“ING writes over 90 per cent of its business through the broker channel. Brokers are the most critical source and important avenue of growth to us and continuing to drive growth through the broker channel remains front and center to our strategy. Everything that we do – and will be doing – is centred around how to make lives easier for our brokers,” Thompson said.

“We have the number one NPS in the country among banks and we have a clear, simple, compelling proposition. The three products that we have have relatively simplistic policies and processes, and we’re really in the business of looking to make life easier for customers and provide good, fair value for money.

“A key priority will be continuing to review policies through the course of the year with which, hopefully, we will have more to share directly with you in due course, as the year progresses.”

However, he added that environmental and social governance and lending to help the decarbonisation of Australia could be the next cab off the rank.

[Related: ING appoints new head of home loans]