Speed-dating to become regular non-bank event

Last Wednesday nine lenders, Avanti, Bluestone, First Mortgage Trust, Heartland, Liberty, NZCU Baywide, RESIMAC, Southern Cross Partners, and Spotcap hosted the event to showcase their products to the adviser channel. 

The next special events are due for March 2019, with Christchurch believed to be one of the destinations in line to host. 

Sandra Algar, an adviser at Mortgage Link, said the event helped the industry "broaden their horizons". She added: "It’s important to know about specialist lending options – for some clients, it could be the difference between getting the lending they need and not.”

Bernie Upton of The Home Loan shop said the event was useful, despite using major banks for most of his business: "It was excellent. In our business we’re probably dealing 95 per cent with the ‘main thing’, but there’s a lot of applications that don’t fit their criteria, especially in the changing environment we’re operating in now. It was good for us to see how the specialist lenders collaborate with each other, and allow us to collaborate with them to get efficient outcomes for customers.”

Meanwhile, NIULife Home Loans founder Jon Masaga said customers were beginning to talk more about specialist lenders: "Most people don’t know enough about specialist lending. Nowadays I have noticed that customers are a lot more open to specialist lenders: as long as we explain why these options work for them, customers are more than happy to consider it. It was valuable having the lenders there and being able to ask questions about the types of deals they can and can’t do.”

Geoff Styche of NZ Capital Mortgages and Insurance added: "There are lots of product enhancements that the non-bank lenders are bringing into the market now as their businesses mature. They are all able to do product enhancements, so it’s really important to keep up-to-date with those, otherwise, you’re probably not doing the right thing by your business and by your clients.”