ASIC report boosts broker confidence in low-doc lending

Speaking to Mortgage Business, Bluestone Asia Pacific general manager Peter Wood said things have improved for the lender.

“The ASIC report has certainly helped,” Mr Wood said.

“Things have improved but we are still just educating brokers that if they follow the process and the requirements of what the lender needs then there is no problem with writing those loans,” he said.

Last month, the corporate watchdog released the findings of its review of low-doc home loans, which found lenders had tightened their lending practices.

Over the last few months Bluestone has been ramping up its sales team, hiring a national sales manager and a handful of BDMs. 

Mr Wood said re-educating the third-party channel about low-doc loan products remains a big focus for the group.

Like its shareholder Macquarie Bank, Bluestone is investing in a quality support network to help brokers regain confidence with low-doc lending, which saw its reputation tarnished in the aftermath of the GFC.

“Our BDM recruitment is a bit more complex in that we are in a different part of the market than Macquarie,” Mr Wood said.

“Obviously industry experience is paramount,” he added.

“In saying that, we look more for skill sets. We deal with certain profiles of borrowers, so they don’t fit your normal stock standard mould.

“We have had more success and people understand our business a bit better from a sales perspective if they come from a finance company environment because they are generally different types of borrower profiles, as opposed to your major banks, who you can interchange fairly well between major lenders who are writing a stock standard product.”

While the mechanics of the lending process are not entirely different from ‘vanilla’ mortgages, being a specialist lender means a specialist team of BDMs.

“Being a non-bank lender, it is all about seeing as many different people as you can as opposed to some of the mainstream banks concentrating on certain groups across the market,” Mr Wood said.