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Jessica Darnbrough
One of Australia’s credit unions is looking to significantly ramp up its position in the broker space, appointing a new national manager of broker as well as six business development managers.
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CUA’s group general manager of distribution, Darrin Northey, told The Adviser that the broker channel represents a major opportunity for the lender – one CUA could not afford to miss.
“We reintroduced ourselves to the channel in February last year and have enjoyed great success as a result,” he said.
“We aim to build on that success in 2013, and we know that to do that we have to have a dedicated team of individuals who can offer the brokers and brokerage groups we deal with ongoing support.
“It is for this reason we decided it was prudent to not only ramp up our BDM workforce but create a new national manager of brokers position.”
While Mr Northey said CUA currently has no immediate plans to get itself onto the panels of additional aggregation groups, he would not rule out that possibility in the near future.
“It is not something we are looking at right now, but we won’t close ourselves off to the possibility,” he said.
“We have to look at every opportunity as an opportunity for growth.”
Mr Northey said the lender was more concerned with building strong relationships with customers through both the first and third-party channels.
“We have made some changes to our online platform as well as our branches to make them both more user-friendly. We want to be the alternate lender of choice for borrowers,” he said.
“We know borrowers want an alternative to the big four and we want to be that alternative. However, to do that, we know we need to not only offer good products at sharp prices, but we need to have a point of differentiation whether that be an excellent online platform, a unique branch experience or an unparalleled service proposition.”
