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What I found is that brokers are realising now that their biggest competition is the four other brokers on the street. So, it’s really become about how they can differentiate the experience. It’s no longer, I’m just a broker, it’s what makes you special versus the other four, what’s your unique proposition?
Baber Zaka
General Manager of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Really good businesses have done that. They’ve developed a brand, they’ve got really strong back-end processes, they’ve got really targeted niche markets that they’re going after, and they’re really homing in on that. And it’s no longer just a generic ‘I’m a broker’ – it’s more ‘I’m a broker who specialises in’, and I think that’s really important in today’s market.
Simple deals just aren’t simple anymore. Everyone’s got nuances to their application – where lenders are now having to change, is reflecting the complexity that we see in the population – customers are required to look at more innovative solutions. Therefore, brokers need to know those, and lenders need to be able to one: provide those solutions in terms of having a wide range of policies but also help navigate and help work really closely with brokers – cookie-cutter solutions aren’t going to work for everyone.
“Cookie-cutter solutions aren’t going to work for everyone.”
— says Baber Zaka, General Manager of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
We’ve hired just over 50 additional credit staff in Australia to really double down on that kind of case ownership and having someone to speak to for a great credit outcome – in particular with our top supporters in our platinum cohort, we have a dedicated platinum credit assessor, so you can actually workshop deals before they are even in to say, ‘I’ve got this exception I need, or there’s this really complex scenario.’
Fundamentally, it comes down to relationships. The thing I love about the broker channel is it’s fundamentally a relationship business. And I think that’s one of the dangers people face at the moment is trying to digitise and automate everything and taking out the relationship bit. Whereas that’s actually the bit that you need to be doubling down on.
Technology will make the back end always a lot simpler – but the relationships are the bits that are going to stay.
“You haven’t actually taken the time to build the relationship that could potentially last 20, 30 years.”
— says Baber Zaka, General Manager of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
If you’ve only spent 10 minutes talking to your customer and just got them in and out the door as efficiently as possible, you haven’t actually taken the time to actually build the relationship that could potentially last 20, 30 years. Otherwise you’re just commoditising your own business by just saying, ‘I’m going to do this transaction for you’, then they very well go to someone else for the next transaction.
At CBA, we have such a wealth of data. So, we’re piloting how we can help brokers be more proactive in actually understanding when those critical moments are. We’ve piloted it among our platinum brokers giving nudges to say: ‘We think this customer has enough equity for next investment. Maybe that’s a conversation you want to have so you can actually be proactive before they’ve even thought of it themselves’. Even if it’s not the right time, at least the customer knows you’re thinking about them.
If you sell on rate, you’re just going to lose on rate. If you’re selling a proposition of: ‘I’m actually talking you through this, I’m helping you structure this, I’m making this as easy as possible, I’m getting rid of the roadblocks’, then that’s a lot more valuable for a customer.
That tripartite relationship – between the customer, the experienced broker, and the experienced banker – has proven to be extremely successful for Judo and will continue to be going forward.
Tune in to hear more!
You can listen to the full conversation with CBA’s general manager of third-party banking, Baber Zaka, in the Broker Daily Spotlight podcast, here:
Baber Zaka
General Manager of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Commonwealth Bank is Australia’s leading provider of integrated financial services.
