Editorial

Crazy start to the year; but what does the rest of 2021 look like?

Normally when we get back to work after our summer break it’s a slow and steady build up to the year ahead. 2021 already feels a lot different from normal.

It seems everyone in the market place is flat out writing business. With mortgage volumes increasing and house prices rising it’s a pretty good time to be a mortgage adviser.

How long will it last?

Who knows? There is growing talk from Government that they want to slow the housing market down and it seems they are hell-bent on stopping property investors going about their legitimate business. We have heard this hot air from politicians previously but there is a feeling that they mean business and don’t really care about property investors.

Clearly the big banks are towing the line by ramping up lending restrictions to investors.

The feeling in the market is that they are going down this line to keep in the good books with Government – especially as the new Code of Conduct bill is weaving its way through Parliament.

It does not seem that these restrictions have much to do with risk in lending to this sector.

Assuming the market heads in this direction first home buyers are likely to be an increasingly valuable market for advisers.

While it is another new year it seems one thing has not changed. Appalling bank turnaround times. The system is at breaking point and something needs to happen.

We hear one bank recently tried to limit applications from advisers to one, with a maximum LVR of 60%.

With conduct regulations coming down the regulatory pipelines it would appear to be very hard for banks to argue they are working in their customers’ best interests when they give mortgage approvals from their networks priority over adviser-originated ones.

After all pretty much every bank says adviser business is driven by customer demand.

To add more complexity we understand many of the issues stem from banks running on antiquated IT systems.

In the past year the risks of poor IT have been demonstrated across some of New Zealand’s biggest financial organisations.

One of the themes we plan to explore this year is how mortgage advisers future proof their businesses and make them more resilient – especially if we have another lockdown. It’s going to be an interesting challenge and one we hope readers find useful. If you would like to contribute please email me (philip@tmmonline.nz).

At the end of last year we saw a flurry of activity amongst the dealer groups. NZ Financial Services Group’s acquisition of Kepa was one of the worst kept secrets in the industry, while SHARE’s acquisition of Newpark was a total surprise.

Over this year many of you will be wondering if you are in the group that best suits your needs. It will be interesting to see how this evolves over 2021 – again that is another area we plan to watch closely.

All the best for 2021.

Philip Macalister

Publisher

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Publisher

Philip Macalister

Subeditor

Dawn Adams

Contributors

Daniel Dunkley, Daniel Smith, Miriam Bell, Paul Watkins, Steve Wright

Design

Samantha Garnier

Photography Credit

James The Thomas, Nordwood, Douglas Bagg, Tiendat Nguyen

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Jill Lewis P: 07 349 1920 E: jill.lewis@tarawera.co.nz

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