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Jessica Darnbrough & Vivienne Kelly
A majority of brokers believe channel conflict continues to pose a major challenge, according to a new poll.
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A recent straw poll conducted by The Adviser found 82.2 per cent of all brokers believe channel conflict is “still an issue”.
Of the 179 respondents, just 17.8 per cent said it was not a problem.
Respond Finance’s Mitchell Blackburn is one broker who believes channel conflict represents a problem for the third party channel.
While Mr Blackburn believes significant inroads have been made in this area by Australia’s lenders, he also believes more needs to be done.
“I definitely think there’s still an issue with channel conflict. I think a fair bit still needs to be done from the top down to change the culture,” he said.
Mr Blackburn understands branch workers’ predicament – “they have their own KPIs that they’re trying to adhere to or meet”, he noted – but said some bank branches suffer from inconsistency.
“The rotation of staff within the banks is quite high, so what might be the ethics of one branch where a staff member has been may not be the ethics of another.”
Rate Detective Home Loans’ Warren Dworcan has been able to circumvent this issue by establishing strong relationships with the banks themselves.
According to Mr Dworcan, building strong relationships with bank branches can minimise potential problems.
“I have a very good relationship with the banks themselves and if something like channel conflict were to take place, I’d like to think I would have the means to go and discuss it with the appropriate person,” he said.
His comments come just days after Westpac’s general manager for broker distribution, Tony MacRae, told The Adviser that the bank had managed to significantly improve perceived channel conflict.
Last week, Mr MacRae said the bank’s ‘local squad’ initiative, which forces bank managers to build relationships with the broker channel, had helped to mitigate channel conflict issues and buoy the lender’s cross-sell ratio.
“We do not want to have a strong branch network and a weak broker network or vice versa. We both need to be strong and we need to work together so that we can all win in this market, and there is room for all of us to win in this market,” Mr MacRae said.
