(11 March 2010 – Australia) Westpac Banking Corporation has denied reports that it is set to reduce the number of broker groups that the bank uses to retail home loans.The Australian Financial Review reported that Westpac was planning on cutting its broker groups by 27 as it aimed to tighten the accreditation process.
A spokesman for Westpac told The Adviser that while some brokers has lost their accreditations with the institution, the rumoured cut of 27 groups was purely speculative.
The bank added that it asks brokers to write at least one Westpac loan every six months and, if they fail to do that, they are then asked to undertake a formal reaccreditation process.
The spokesman also told The Adviser that while the number of individual brokers cut from the bank’s network would probably be in the hundreds, it had not heard where or how many groups had actually lost accreditations, or even if any had even been cut.