From February, through the COVID-19 pandemic, one lender has seen an increase of 82% in terms of dollars settled through the broker channel – “massive growth” the group has attributed to several interplaying factors.
As MoneyPlace CEO Stuart Stoyan sees it, on a macro level, the key to achieving such a robust figure lies in the group's refusal to slow its momentum in the face of the spreading virus and accompanying economic stress; instead, it continued to drill down on its processes and actively grow its team with BDMs and lending specialists.
“Being up over 80% in six months through COVID points to the fact we’ve stayed open. While we’ve been simplifying the process, making it speedier, giving one hour time-to-funding in many circumstances, it becomes self-fulfilling as more brokers use us because it’s effortless; they realise through the process that there’s a great way they can meet more customer needs with personal loans and get pretty good remuneration from it as well,” Stoyan explained.
The personal lender's large-scale self-improvement was supported by specific policy updates, one of which saw MoneyPlace’s maximum loan amount raised to $60,000.
“That’s pretty much market-leading in terms of an unsecured offer,” said Stoyan.
“To make it even better, we have the ability to lend to two people in a household for $120,000 – $60,000 for each partner, with both individuals being individually assessed. What that means is that people are now able to borrow up to $120,000 from us.”
The group also last week launched a 6.45% interest rate which, importantly, has a 6.45% comparison rate as well – making it the “leading unsecured rate in the market” for personal loans.
“This comes back to some of the basic principles of why we set up MoneyPlace,” said Stoyan.
“Traditional lenders are in this space because they’re making a massive amount of money off of consumer lending, off of unsecured loans and off of credit cards. We cut through that.
“At a time when you’ve got record low interest rates and a record low cash rate, you’d expect to see record low personal loan rates as well.”
Stoyan stressed that customers with credit card rates at 20.0% or personal loans from the bank at 14.0% present opportunities for brokers to talk about debt consolidation and help get people’s finances cleaned up before they fill out a mortgage application – with MoneyPlace's most recent figures making it clear brokers are finding and taking those chances.
“More and more brokers have started to realise how easy it is to do personal loans,” said Stoyan.
“Yesterday, [our head of broker] Alf Vasta was talking to a broker who settled a loan in an hour and picked up a $990 broker fee for that. The feedback from the broker was, ‘This was effortless.’
“So: the customer got a really great outcome, the loan was funded within an hour, and brokers are seeing there’s a really low touch, effortless process that makes more sense than waiting three weeks for somebody to maybe get back to you.”
