EDITORIAL

A sprint into summer

Who would have thought the housing market would be so strong in this massively impacted Covid-19 world of ours? All reports are that lenders and advisers are run off their feet trying to process loan applications. Banks are scrambling to get more resources into their teams to help improve dreadfully slow turnaround times.

It's a perennial problem for the industry and you wonder when will something happen to actually improve what is a systemic issue. Covid-19 – and the increase in technology – provided the perfect opportunity to change things up.

But alas branch staff are being brought in to help which is an all-hands-ondeck call.

The worst kept secret in the industry this year is finally out. NZ Financial Services Group is taking over Kepa. For NZFSG this is largely a play to bulk up the insurance side of its operations, however it will still get a significant boost on the home loan front.

The group is already settling $1 billion plus a month and that is likely to grow at least 10%.

While Kepa has always been the least co-operative group when we do our surveys, we understand it does write a significant volume of home loans.

In a big picture sense it is an interesting move as most of the rationalisation amongst groups has seen the newer ones disappear and not last the distance. Mortgage Supply and NZMA was absorbed into Astute and Kepa – while it has been around for a while – is still at the younger end of the scale. It's a group that has struggled to identify its purpose over the years and has had more than its share of internal ructions.

No doubt increased scale will help the group.

Some advisers have raised concerns that NZFSG's majority shareholder is the White family in Australia (of the Ray White real estate brand).

It was interesting to see TMM's peer publisher business in Australia name Loan Market as number one in its Aggregator of Choice survey for the third year running.

Executive chairman Sam White said, "I started this business over 26 years ago when broking was in its infancy and if you told me then, that we had managed to build a business that was offering so much value to our network I would have been blown away."

"We are so proud of this result. It gives us the confidence that we are delivering on our four promises, and supporting our network to deliver the best customer experience possible."

Let's hope it does the same thing in New Zealand.

Philip Macalister

Publisher

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