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The big four bank has welcomed new appointments to its commercial broker leadership team and broker support team.
National Australia Bank (NAB) has expanded its broker support team in the commercial broker segment, as the major bank continues to focus on growth in commercial lending.
The major bank announced that Anita Lindsay – its former manager for change, enablement, and banker support for business lending products – has joined NAB’s commercial broker and equipment finance leadership team as the head of Western Australia/South Australia/the Northern Territory, reporting to Chris Thomas, NAB’s executive, commercial broker and equipment finance sales.
She joins the other state leaders, who include Sam Turri (NSW), Peter Bugler (Queensland), and John Shillington (Victoria/Tasmania).
Lindsay has more than a decade of experience in business finance and has worked at NAB for the past three years.
Prior to joining NAB, she was a Western Australian sales manager for aggregator Australian Finance Group (AFG) and has also held relationship manager roles at Bankwest and Suncorp Group.
She began her new role on 15 July 2024 and now leads a team of experienced business development managers (BDMs) and equipment finance professionals who are responsible for growing and supporting NAB’s broker and customer base in Western Australia, South Australia, and the NT.
Commenting on her new role, Lindsay said she was “excited to be taking this next career step with NAB, joining a dedicated team who are passionate about bringing the best of NAB to brokers and their customers”.
“I’m looking forward to hearing first-hand from brokers what their customers need and working together to provide tailored solutions to their business customers,” she said.
Meanwhile, NAB’s business banker for the broker channel Alex Wellman moved into a new position as BDM for Central and North Queensland on 30 July.
He has spent nearly three years in business finance at NAB and has a range of broader financial services industry experience in real estate and accounting.
The former accountant will be enhancing NAB’s on-the-ground broker support network from Townsville.
Speaking of the new appointments, Thomas said NAB was committed to its motto of being the ‘bank behind the broker’.
He said: “We are excited to welcome Anita to NAB’s commercial broker leadership team, and I am confident that her 11 years of financial services industry experience, combined with her tenure of over three years at NAB will be an asset to our specialist team.
“As more borrowers choose brokers, we pride ourselves on our responsiveness and service, and our ability to work with brokers and their customers to ensure they achieve their goals and get to where they want to go.”
Thomas said that NAB would soon be supporting more brokers to write commercial finance through a series of commercial lending workshops to “encourage more brokers to enter the path to commercial broking”.
NAB focusing on commercial growth
The moves come as NAB continues to focus on commercial lending.
It is currently the largest lender to small and medium businesses in Australia and saw credit rise by almost 9 per cent in the year to April 2024. It also reportedly saw its strongest pipeline on record in the business bank in March.
The bank also recently made Rachel Slade - its former group executive for personal banking - its new group executive, business and private banking, and its CEO Andrew Irvine had spent three years in the business banking side of the business (as group executive, business and private banking).
It has also been investing in the commercial broker offering. Earlier this year, it partnered with digital platform Cito+ (CitoPlus) to develop a digital solution that allows brokers to submit digital applications directly through the tech platform.
The new solution – effective 24 April – removes the need for extra forms (including loan application forms and customer asset and liability forms) and Excel pre-qualification or servicing calculators and therefore allows all documents associated with a commercial loan application to be shared digitally.
Its June quarter update revealed that lending balances rose 1 per cent over the June quarter, supported by per cent growth in Australian SME business lending, with NAB stating: "W]e continue to prioritise growth in our SME franchise."
[Related: Submissions open for brand-new Commercial Finance Awards 2024]
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