Modernisation, sustainable lending all part of mix, says head of mortgages
George Thompson, ING Australia’s new head of mortgages, says the bank has built an incredible mortgage business and a strong position in the market thanks to its close partnerships with the broker channel.
Thompson (pictured above), who has been with ING for almost eight years and was appointed to lead its mortgage business in December 2023, spoke to MPA about his role, the importance of brokers to the non-major bank and its future plans to assist more brokers and their customers by enhancing its products, processes and services.
Thompson previously worked for Lloyds in the UK and came to Sydney 11 years ago, joining ING in September 2016.
He led the ING’s daily banking business, including payments and savings, then took over the consumer lending business (credit cards and personal loans portfolio) and wealth (superannuation and insurance) portfolios, before being appointed head of mortgages.
While only five months into the role, Thompson said the experience had been fantastic.
“The ING Australia mortgages business is phenomenal,” said Thompson.
“When you look at what it's been able to build over its 25-year history, the positioning that we have in market, the NPS amongst customers and brokers, and getting to know the team and be with the broader BDM sales network and just seeing how we're you know out there in market and what we stand for as a brand.
“I’m really excited about the future and what lies ahead.”
Importance of brokers to ING Australia
More than 90% of ING’s loans business is sourced through brokers.
“That’s been consistent for some time now, so the broker distribution channel is incredibly important to us,” Thompson said.
He said brokers played a fundamental role in Australian society, supporting customers when they are making the biggest financial decisions of their lives.
“ING's role as part of that ecosystem is to help support brokers in turn, so that they are supporting customers.
“We're really proud of that service proposition … providing some of the market-leading turnaround times and then continuing to ensure that we can provide that service as we look to scale our business in market and continue to grow with the broker channel front and centre of everything that we do.”
Putting brokers at the heart of ING decisions
In December, ING combined its sales and distribution channels with its product and IT teams. The heads of sales and distribution, residential mortgages, pricing and credit risk now all report to Thompson, combining to make one leadership team looking after mortgages.
Thompson said the premise was to bring the third-party distribution team and direct channel closer to the business “to ensure their voices are heard through the whole process.”
“The example that I would give, if you were building a new product, if you're looking at policy changes, if you're looking at pricing changes, it's fundamentally placing that broker voice at the front and centre in everything that we do and thereby ultimately making sure that we're delivering a better service promise to brokers and thereby customers.”
Three key aims for ING’s lending business
Thompson said ING had exciting plans to serve the needs of brokers going forward.
These plans were in three key areas:
- Policy changes to help more Aussies
Thompson said he was thinking about segments where ING could be “writing more business and helping more Australians”.
This would involve reviewing policies and investigating possible changes, with a particular focus on the investor and self-employed segments.
“We’re hoping to be making further announcements later in the year associated with that.”
- Modernisation
Thompson said ING was also looking at ways to continually modernise processes “to make it easier for brokers to be able to do business with us”.
- ESG and sustainable lending
Thompson said ING would be looking at the critical role banks played in ESG and sustainable lending and figuring out how it could support brokers and customers in the transition to decarbonise the economy.
“Residential buildings in Australia are responsible for around 24% of overall electricity use and more than 10% of the carbon emissions that exist in Australia,” he said.
“Houses and apartments with poor energy performance impact the wider economy and the energy grid … the role that banks play is incredibly important in helping support the broader transition of society at large. ING is committed to being a leader in this space.”
Thompson said increasingly customers were expressing a lot of interest in making their homes more efficient.
“They can see both the long-term climate but also financial benefits for them and are looking to the banks to play a role there to support them,” he said.
“We can see that that's filtering up through the broker community and we're definitely seeing sort of an uptick in broker queries around that space in the past year.”
Thompson said for ING, supporting customers to decarbonise their homes was about the end-to-end value chain, requiring the broader market and banks to take the lead.
“That's all the way through from awareness of ‘what is the energy efficiency of my home’ through to ‘how do I Improve that’, ‘who do I partner with’, ‘ how do I finance it’ and then tracking ‘how am I going’ after,” he said.
“These are big decisions that consumers need to make and we're excited to help customers through that journey.”
Thompson said as more and more customers told brokers about their interest in making their homes more energy efficient, brokers would then be prioritising this sector and looking for lenders that could support these customers .
Lending growth
Thompson said ING was looking for profitable growth across the portfolio.
“We’re continuing to have a successful year. We were 1.3 times system last year.
“When you look at different pockets of growth for us, there's no obvious group that's driving the growth, but anecdotally speaking, we are noticing that first home buyers are pooling together to purchase with friends and for us that's a really interesting insight that reflects the times around Gen Z being smart and thinking differently about homeownership.”
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