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Australia’s largest mutual bank yesterday revealed strong results for the past financial year, with plans to further invest in the broker channel.
According to CUA’s 2013 financial year results, the lender generated a net profit after tax of $57.5 million, up 12.7 per cent from $51 million in the previous financial year.
After significant investment in the third party distribution channel, CUA chief executive officer Chris Whitehead told The Adviser that there was still more in store for brokers.
“The total number of loans settled increased by $332.6 million, up 21.8 per cent from the previous corresponding period," he said.
“There have been two aspects to our success in those numbers: Firstly, the launch of our Rate Breaker product, winner of several innovation awards across the industry, has proved to be hugely successful, and we’ve also been very strong in the fixed rate space.
“But aside from our products success, we’ve been investing in the broker channel, putting BDMs on the ground and establishing a dedicated servicing team.”
While Mr Whitehead admits the lender has been letting brokers down by keeping their submission process very ‘manual’, he told The Adviser that the bank is planning to introduce electronic submissions.
“We’ve had our hands tied a little bit by keeping it as a very manual process, which doesn’t suit many brokers, so with electronic submission I think we’ll have a very strong service offering to back up the very strong product.”