The international giant has seen huge home loan growth – and it's hiring
The giant state owned bank’s Australian entity Bank of China (Australia) Ltd (BoCAL) has had a bumper 2019 – expanding its home loan book to $2.6bn – a 73% increase over the preceding 12 months.
And it’s not just been home loans seeing growth – over the last 24 months the bank has seen retail deposits double to $2.2bn.
As well as making sure it has strong distribution (its mortgages are sold through AFG, Connective, The Home loan Group and Choice), BoCAL has been aggressively hiring experienced talent – a line-up of ex-NAB managers have helped the expansion and last year it managed to nab Peter Cirica from CBA to take a key leadership role.
BoCAL now claims to be Australia’s fastest growing retail bank lender and deposit taker, and in the past month alone it has advertised 20 new vacancies – specifically looking for ex or current Big Four employees.
The bank has been focusing on a new broker-facing digital platform to increase its attractiveness to the broker community, and has been reported in Banking Day as being keen to establish warehouse funding with high profile Australian players in the mortgage industry.
BoCAL’s two and three year fixed rate mortgages available through mortgagee brokers are currently priced at 2.19%.
Although Bank of China was one of the first foreign banks in Australia, establishing itself in Sydney in 1942, BoCAL wasn’t established until 2005. It has nine branches in Australia – five in Sydney, two in Melbourne, one in Perth and one in Brisbane.
