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COVER STORY GETTING THE CHEMISTRY RIGHT Westpac’s Janelle Pearce and Greg Pell on specialisation and the importance of the broker-banker relationship in the growing commercial market THE ONLY WAY IS UP
$5.9bn
Total value of commercial loans written in Australia between March and September 2015
11%
Proportion of commercial loans written by brokers Source: MFAA
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Riding the wave of channel growth It’s no secret that Australian brokers have been riding the wave of the residential property boom in recent years. But industry figures have been predicting a resurgence in the commercial market as far back as 2012, and for Westpac’s national head of commercial introducers, Janelle Pearce, and Greg Pell, general manager of Westpac equipment finance and commercial introducers, the proof is in the pudding. “We’re already seeing uplift in volume. Compared to last year we’re settling 12% more commercial business,” Pearce told Australian Broker. Broker Going hand in hand with the rise of commercial business comes similar growth in the burgeoning commercial broker channel, and entering the playing field are not only residential mortgage brokers but experienced commercial bankers that have left the major banks to run their own businesses as commercial brokers. According to Pell, a big part of the channel growth is customer demand, and he suggests the upward trend of customers opting to use commercial brokers could represent a swing in the market itself, indicating that brokers are steadily on their
way to becoming the channel of choice in the commercial market. “I think that’s getting back to customer choice – customers are electing to go to commercial brokers,” he said. Quality over quantity Pearce and Pell make no secret of the lender’s vision to be the number one partner for introducers in the country, but according to Pearce this has little to do with the number of Westpac commercial brokers, and far more to do with the standard of its brokers across the board. Pearce admits that, like other major lenders, Westpac’s expectations are high for accreditation into the commercial third-party channel, and while it makes the process for aspiring commercial brokers more difficult, a by-product of this is that lenders are left with only the strongest commercial brokers who will continue to bring in quality applications. “We’ve implemented our own compliance framework within the business we operate … we have a very strict process we go through to accredit someone as a commercial broker,” Pearce said.
4/04/2016 3:36:22 PM