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Searches on mortgage broker terms have increased over the last year, the major bank’s webinar on customer behaviour has revealed.
In an interview during NAB’s Broker Forward View webinar on 23 November, NAB chief marketing officer Suzana Ristevski spoke to Google’s Melbourne director of customers and government Sean McDonell about Google’s set of data on consumer searches in regard to brokers.
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According to Mr McDonell, searches on mortgage broker terms have increased 20 per cent year on year (2023 from 2022), while home loan searches through the search engine grew 23 per cent year on year.
Additionally, generic terms such as “mortgage repayment calculator”, “home loan rates”, and “home loan comparison” contributed to 81 per cent of home loan consumer searches during the last quarter.
Mr McDonell stated that these Google searches emphasised the growing need for support on home lending from customers.
“The insight here is that people start their home loans journey with an open mind. They need help with research – they turn to Google and no doubt brokers for help,” Mr McDonell said.
NAB executive – broker distribution Adam Brown said that brokers “play a critical role” in helping customers “get great outcomes from home lending” as a more challenging economy is expected in 2024.
“Customers continue to vote with their feet, with nearly 70 per cent choosing to use a mortgage broker for their home lending needs and 64.3 per cent of new NAB home loans coming through the broker channel,” Mr Brown said.
According to the major bank, around 25 per cent of NAB broker home loans now go through NAB Simple Home Loans.
Updated clawback position and broker strategy focus
During the webinar, Mr Brown also stated that the major bank was reviewing its position on clawbacks and was “looking forward to, in the early part of 2024, giving an update and letting brokers know what that’s going to look like going forward”.
Clawback policies have been revised by several lenders over the last six months such as Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).
Furthermore, non-bank lenders – including Rate Money and Mortgage Ezy – have been seeking to abolish clawbacks entirely, while Pepper Money scrapped clawbacks on commercial finance products earlier this year.
Along with the clawback revision, Mr Brown stated the major bank aims to grow the number of loans introduced to the bank through the broker channel next year to further build on its “bank behind the broker tagline”.
Mr Brown commented: “Seventy per cent of our home loans in the country are originated through brokers and within NAB, it’s somewhere around 63–64 per cent of all our loans are introduced through the broker network.
“So, over the course of the next 12 months, that’s probably going to increase, truth be told, and that’s what I’m really looking forward to.”
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