Offering your clients a holistic finance offering is more important than ever.
Diversification of your product offerings and your value proposition helps attract a wider range of business development opportunities and it can help safeguard your income when regulatory or policy changes affect one of your market segments. It can create additional income streams and it means you can look to retain clients who may previously have looked elsewhere for other financial needs.
We encourage diversification across our broker network to help grow and protect each of our brokers’ businesses. Being able to attract, service and retain clients when it comes to their residential and business needs is key. We’re here to make that task easier than ever before.
Over 52% of Australians turn to a broker for their mortgage finance needs.
Our aim is to see similar figures across the commercial lending landscape.
Commercial finance is the new battleground, and we want to lead the charge. Today, ‘commercial’ is largely under-banked and under-served in Australia and our aim is to ensure Australian businesses have access to the right business finance, through the right channel: AFG brokers.
Our alliance with US-based Biz2Credit, called AFG Business, was formed on the back of a worldwide search for the right technology partner, and it began over two years ago. This has been no mean feat given the complexities that sit behind it by way of technology capability, integration with third party providers and the integration with our key lenders’ different platforms and tools, and most importantly, their risk and credit appetite.
AFG has invested heavily in this program to ensure it is fit for purpose in servicing our Australian marketplace which is far more complex than the US model.
The AFG Business platform is a game changer and it is an industry-first for Australia.
We are proud to very shortly be in a position to offer this to our brokers, and we’re so excited about the potential business growth this will deliver. Not to mention the impact we will have on thousands of Australia’s small businesses which are desperate for assistance, choice of lender, and access to many products not currently well known.
The platform’s patented analytics and financial services technology will provide small business borrowers with a broad range of finance options to align borrower needs with lender appetite, delivering faster and more efficient access to the appropriate capital.
The platform enables brokers to prepare a single commercial application that prior to submission can provide a list of suitable lenders with a high likelihood of approval, satisfying a wider range of commercial market segments, and giving choice on criteria such as purpose, term, repayment options and alike.
As a specialist commercial finance broker, with our new technology investments just around the corner, we’re giving you the ability to attract, fulfil and service market segments sub $1m that may not have been an efficient avenue of growth in the past. Diversifying into residential finance has also never been easier thanks to the tools and support on offer at AFG. If this isn’t something you do a great deal of now, we’re here to show you how.
As a specialist residential finance broker, we’ll help you learn the ropes, gain knowledge on talking the talk and understand how business lending can help your clients, particularly in the sub $1m space thanks to the new AFG Business engine.
The platform is designed to remove a large extent of complex financial analytics, and to use brokers’ skills for a great commercial conversation to provide outstanding customer solutions.
While AFG Business is an investment in innovation and technology, it’s also an investment in people. We’re investing and building a new opportunity for you, our brokers, and your customers to grow.
Watch this space as AFG Business is unveiled in the coming months. This is a significant investment and we have significant expectations when it comes to the difference this will make to our brokers’ businesses.
