Lender strengthens third party team

While other lenders are tightening their third party team, ING DIRECT has announced it will appoint several new employees across key areas of the business including new business development managers, relationship managers and broker support staff.

ING DIRECT said the additional employees will reinforce the proactive service nature of the Broker Partner Program, which was launched last month.

“Our focus on brokers has never been stronger and we’ll continue to explore ways to increase our resources in the broker channel. Under our Broker Partner Program, broker visitations from BDMs are up 120 per cent,” ING DIRECT’s head of broker distribution Mark Woolnough said.

“We’re also seeing clear increases in our applications and conversions, which are a direct result of our initiatives over the past six months.

“All our recent initiatives were developed in direct response to feedback from our brokers, to develop a simpler and fairer service offering for our brokers. We’ve seen a clear increase in satisfaction amongst our brokers, with our internal broker satisfaction research program indicating the vast majority of our brokers are satisfied or very satisfied.

“I’m incredibly proud of our team and the way the new structure is delivering for us, it’s so important our brokers are seeing a positive gain given third parties account for over 90 per cent of our production.”