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ISCOVER
James Mitchell
Just days after ME Bank announced it was entering the third party distribution space, Australia's largest credit union has signaled that it will engage in broker distribution in the New Year.
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CUA toldThe Adviser's sister publication, Smart Property Investment, that it was actively looking at the market and may look to enter the third party distribution space early next year.
"We have strong growth goals and we know that the broker market can help us achieve those goals, which is why we are actively looking at this space and will look to re-enter the market in early 2012 if not before," CUA's group general manager strategy and marketing Andrew Hadley said.
CUA was actively involved in the broker space before the GFC.
However, according to Mr Hadley, the GFC threw CUA's involvement in the third party space "on its head".
"We enjoyed phenomenal growth when we were dealing with the third party channel. In the early 2000s, we grew at 20 per cent – and a large portion of that could be attributed to our brokers. But while the volumes were large, the margins were narrow. As such, when the GFC hit we were forced to leave this space," he said.
"Today, we are really keen to ramp up our growth and if you look industry statistics, one in four loans are written through the broker channel, so we are currently playing in 60 per cent of the pond.
"When the time is right we will re-enter the broker market, which could be in the not too distant future."
CUA's announcement comes hot on the heels of ME Bank's decision to re-engage the broker channel.
Earlier this week, ME Bank's Ian Hendey told The Adviser that the bank was in talks with one large aggregation group and would conduct a soft launch within the next month.
