P&N Group has reached a milestone in its major strategic transformation, realising early benefits that will deliver a more customer-centric bank of the future for current and future customers, through efficient and agile ways of working.
As a leading customer-owned banking group in Australia, P&N Group, is poised to grow its national presence and footprint through its bank brands, P&N Bank in Western Australia and bcu in New South Wales and south-east Queensland.
The Group’s transformation program will see investment in strategic platforms, and replacement of outdated legacy banking systems, processes and products that no longer deliver a modern integrated customer experience.
P&N Group Chief Transformation & Technology Officer Warren Willis said the focus was on developing and leveraging more personalised solutions that provide greater digital enablement and self-service capability, to make the Group easier to bank with, work with, and partner with.
“By taking the opportunity during the transformation program mobilisation to accelerate our delivery six months ahead of schedule, we have been able to shift our focus to deliver early value to our customers, staff and partners,” Willis said.
“We’re simplifying and improving a number of our policies and processes and removing the need for unnecessary paperwork, with an aim of making the lending process faster and easier for brokers, customers, partners and our people.”
“We recently implemented a Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution for our bcu and P&N Bank retail banking brands, which is consistently rated as the number one CRM solution globally.
“This will improve relationship management and interactions with customers throughout their journey and increase internal productivity through streamlined processes and standardised sales management. Customers will see improved turnaround times, more consistent experiences, better communication and the ability to self-serve and book appointments.
“Since our CRM launch, the improved productivity has seen the number of customers contacted within 24 hours of enquiry increase by 17 per cent.”
The broker difference
Increased investment in the broker channel is a key strategic priority for the Group and fundamental to the organisation’s continued organic and inorganic growth aspirations.
The customer-owned banking Group believes it can play a key role in providing brokers and their clients a genuine banking alternative to the major banks and are committed to prioritising a better broker offering and experience.
P&N Group General Manager Broker, Kaine Adamson said the Group’s bcu and P&N Bank retail banking brands offer great products, so now the focus was on offering better support to the industry by providing an exceptional experience for brokers and their clients.
“We’ve spent a long time listening to our brokers and are committed to becoming easier and more efficient to do business with, by striving for simplified and consistent processes, platforms, products and policies which result in faster turnaround times,” Adamson said.
“We are involving brokers in the design of our future operating model, which will ensure we’re working together to provide brokers with solutions that will meet their needs.”
As a result, P&N Bank and bcu have implemented several changes to improve and streamline the assessment process, as well as introducing Apply Online Supporting Documents, DocuSign and Adobe Sign.
A new case management process was also launched in June for all P&N Bank and bcu brokers, to provide a single point of contact with decision makers. Pleasingly this is resulting in an improvement to our broker satisfaction results, with P&N brokers experiencing a 30% reduction in touch time and 47% reduction in the number of times an application was handled.
“Year on year our brokers are settling more loans with the P&N Group than ever, with settlements up by 65% on the prior financial year,” Adamson added.
“Given how confusing the market can be especially for first time buyers it’s not surprising that brokers are attracting younger customers than the proprietary streams.
“On average, our customers that are originated via the broker channel are six years younger than those originated through our proprietary channel, and over 60% of the combined First Home Guarantee funding for P&N Bank and bcu is coming from brokers.”
The P&N Bank broker team were recently named winners of the Mutual/Credit Union Lender Award at the 2022 Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia (MFAA)'s WA State Excellence Awards, recognising the team’s strong relationships with Western Australian brokers and highlighting their professionalism and efforts within the industry.