AMP uses planners to catch loan market
Financial services giant AMP will use its' network of planners and advisers across the country to help attract customers to a new loan product offered by the banking arm, according to AMP Bank-ing managing director Stephen Balme.
Financial services giant AMP will use its' network of planners and advisers across the country to help attract customers to a new loan product offered by the banking arm, according to AMP Bank-ing managing director Stephen Balme.
Balme says the AMP Advantage Home Loan will be offered through the planning network, which currently numbers around 15,000 advisers, and attracts nearly a third of existing AMP banking business.
"We will make the product available through planners, even though a majority of business is not coming through them at present," Balme says.
"The current figure is 30 per cent of clients are taking up banking products via a planner, but we could do more in the next year."
Most interest for the product would come through free call numbers but this would feed back into the planner network if clients requested financial plans.
The benefit of this arrangement would be it would allow cross selling into insurance and term life products says Balme, and would result in a greater client relationship.
"Once customers understand and have a focus in their financial needs they also see the benefit of having this under one roof and the planner can solidify the customer relationship," Balme says.
The new loan product uses the average of six median lender rates, which is then reduced by 15 ba-sis points in the first year and 10 basis point for every subsequent year.
The loan also has no fees and since the rate is dictated by market forces Balme says "this guaran-tees the certainty that the rate is always better than the average."
AMP Banking has yet to set monthly target volumes but expects the product to eventually account for about $100 million worth of lending, which will boost market share which is currently around one per cent.
"When we have more products available and a fuller range, then I'd expect not only mortgage rela-tionships but total banking relationships with AMP to significantly increase," Balme says.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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