Chris Thomas: Rolling up the Sleeves

Starting out at NAB as an eager 18-year-old, Chris Thomas, general manager, commercial broker, has now worked at the bank for 32 years

PROFILE

Name: Chris Thomas
Company: NAB
Title: General manager, commercial broker
Years in the industry: 32
Career highlight: “Setting up the third party commercial channel for NAB has been enormously rewarding. I have been so proud of our team who have been building relationships and connecting our terrific brokers with all the very best of NAB”
Career lowlight: “Regretfully, the royal commission. As a career banker it has been a painful reflection of instances where our industry has not treated customers well. Sadly this has overshadowed all the good things bankers and brokers do every day”

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Spending the summer cleaning out containers of wheat is few people’s idea of a good time, but for NAB’s general manager, commercial broker, it was his first experience of the working world. Having quickly realised that it was not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, Chris Thomas ended up at the local NAB branch in Melbourne.

Remembering his days as a new-tobanking 18-year-old, when he started out cleaning the branch and opening the doors for customers, he also recalls that the branch manager would join him on the floor to serve customers when it got busy. 

“You’d have me who started five minutes ago, standing side by side with a veteran who would see no problem in rolling the sleeves up and serving customers. Culturally it was a wonderful place to start
in the bank,” Thomas says.

He spent about five years at the branch, working his way up through different roles, and then in the first half of the 1990s NAB expanded into business banking, and so started the rest of his career journey. 

Describing business banking as “an art”, Thomas says the leaders at that time were the reason NAB is the largest business bank today. He learnt a lot about understanding the customer’s story and facing challenges alongside customers. 

“In their DNA and in their culture, they were just so business-customer orientated. They were always looking for ways to find solutions, and because they had that background of retail customer service, it was always about the customer,” he says. 

Thomas worked his way up through leadership roles at the business bank, moving between metropolitan and regional areas as he did so, and then in 2012 he was asked to lead NAB into the third party commercial broking market.

A vibrant broker channel
After seven years working with brokers in the commercial space, Thomas says it is “always exciting”. He adds that his role as a leader at NAB is energised by the vibrancy of brokers forging relationships with customers and impacting their customers’ lives.

Thomas says some of the greatest lessons he has learned in business are from the customers and brokers he has dealt with.

“There’s a richness of ideas and creativity, and that really excites me. So that’s why I’ve kept doing it for 32 years.”

The commercial industry is also continuing to grow and develop, presenting more opportunities for brokers. Thomas says he has been seeing growth in infrastructure and the sectors that support that, and in turn the commercial broker space is also growing.

“It’s really exciting to see that the value of commercial brokers is being well acknowledged by customers in the market. We are excited by that, because our partnership with those brokers is really bringing great opportunity for us to collectively bring great solutions to those customers,” he says.

For those brokers who have not yet explored commercial lending or who are new to the industry, Thomas says it’s important to have a clearly defined strategy. The commercial space is a big one, and brokers need to be clear on what their value proposition is for their chosen target market.

The next piece of advice he gives is that brokers should not just be “transactional”; instead they should endeavour to understand customers and their strategies, and take the time to walk in their shoes.

Reflections and expectations
Looking back, Thomas says the last 18 months have been a really important time. While he knows how much the industry loves focusing on numbers, he says for him the customer experience is the only compass that matters.

NAB has spent the last year and a half conducting NPS surveys of customers to gauge their level of satisfaction with their experiences with the bank as well as brokers. On top of that it has also surveyed how brokers feel about NAB and looked at the figures together, which form, in Thomas’s words, “a triangle of satisfaction”.

Customers who were introduced to NAB through a broker rated the bank at a +27 Net Promoter Score and their broker at +60, while brokers rated NAB at +42.

“What it says to me as a banker is that our partnership in the eyes of the customer is an extremely compelling one. We need to continue to do more to make that customer’s experience even better,” Thomas says. “If we’re doing that, then we know we’re helping them meet their goals and objectives and helping them accomplish what they’re trying to achieve.

“We’re super excited about partnering with brokers to continue to deliver that sort of value proposition, because we know that will continue to lead to more referrals.” 

Looking ahead to the next year, Thomas is confident that the commercial broker market will continue to grow and see changes as business customers look for trusted advisers, and aggregators put a greater focus on the commercial segment.

However, on the regulatory side of things there is much to work on, because, as he points out, many commercial brokers are writing home loans as well as equipment finance and business loans for their customers. 

The focus of the royal commission, along with the work of the Combined Industry Forum and ASIC and all the changes to the residential mortgage market, may also have an effect on the commercial landscape. 

Thomas says it is important for these groups to work together. 

“I think lenders and brokers working together for a better and stronger industry is what we all need to commit to,” he says.

“We’ve proven we can do that when we’re working with customers and supporting customers. I think there’s a great opportunity to continue to work really closely on building the best industry we can possibly deliver. It’s all about the customer, and it only matters how the customers have been treated. We need to provide that best customer experience.”