There are growing concerns amongst Australia's non-majors that the rise of white labelling has come at a cost to their market share, rather than that of the big banks.
Speaking at a non-majors luncheon hosted by The Adviser in Sydney last week, Suncorp's head of third party Steven Heavey said white labelling was not stripping share away from the majors, but rather hurting Australia's smaller lenders.
"For some aggregators, up to 10 per cent of their volumes are white label," Mr Heavey said.
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank's general manager, third party mortgages Damian Percy agreed and said the fact that white labelling was stealing share away from the non-majors was ironic.
"White label was created in a bid to combat the dominance of the majors and inject a bit of much needed competition into the market," he said.
"Ironically, a number of the white label products are funded by the majors, so these white label products are actually adding to the majors' market share."
But while the non-majors remain concerned about the effects of white labelling on their market share, Australia's aggregation groups believe that white labelling is about more than the funder, but rather the service proposition and creating additional choice for borrowers.
"Regardless of who the product is funded by, when brokers sell white label, they are selling a brandless product. They are selling the product based on its service and value proposition, not who is funding it," FAST chief executive Steve Kane said.
"White labelling is injecting competition into the mortgage market. It promotes the broker proposition of choice by giving them more products to choose from."
