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Teachers Mutual Bank's first 12 months in the third-party channel have helped it become a more successful, knowledgeable and geographically diverse lender.
The bank's national manager of third-party distribution, Mark Middleton, said broker volumes were 30 per cent higher than the bank forecast when it entered the channel last November.
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That was part of the reason Teachers Mutual was able to grow its home loan portfolio by 11.4 per cent during 2013/2014, he said.
Mr Middleton also told The Adviser that brokers had helped Teachers Mutual push strongly beyond its home state of NSW.
Teachers Mutual now sources 60 per cent of its mortgage settlements from NSW, compared to 89 per cent before it entered the third-party channel, he said.
"We don't have a bricks-and-mortar strategy and don't have representation all around the country," he said.
"That's a really heavy investment. We don't have the dollars to invest into it – and it's a longer payback period if you did do that. We even looked at a mobile lender force, but we can get to market much quicker with brokers."
Mr Middleton said Teachers Mutual now has about 900 accredited brokers, with 52 per cent of those coming from outside NSW.
"We've had great support from Queensland and Victoria, as well as growth in Western Australia where we've spent a lot of our business development to date," he said.
"We're also getting good interest and support from South Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania, which has been a secondary wave of business development."
Teachers Mutual currently has three BDMs – one in Western Australia and two in NSW.
One of those Sydney-based BDMs will move to Queensland in January, and will also look after the Northern Territory. A fourth BDM will be added to Victoria next month, and will also look after Tasmania and South Australia.
Mr Middleton said another benefit of dealing with brokers is that they give the bank valuable intelligence about products, fees and prices, which can also be applied to its in-house lending.
Broker feedback was responsible for Teachers Mutual's decision to reduce the cost of its rate lock and to introduce four-year and five-year fixed rates, he added.
Meanwhile, Teachers Mutual has revealed that it is now accredited with eight aggregators, after joining the FAST panel last week.
[Related: Teachers Mutual partners with Custom Equity Group]
