A dream assistant from ScotPac

IN Partnership with

While it won’t make you a cappuccino, ScotPac’s Partner Portal makes helping commercial clients so fast and easy brokers will wonder how they did without it

EVERYBODY WOULD like to have an assistant to help them organise their work, save time, arrange marketing and prioritise tasks, right? Anything that can make life easier when it comes to dealing with clients is a bonus for busy brokers in a quickly changing economy. ScotPac has a tool that's so fast and easy to use that commercial brokers will be able to focus on their main business of supporting small to medium-sized businesses while significantly minimising time spent on paperwork – and it’s completely free. The ScotPac Partner Portal is an interactive solution that allows brokers to quickly find the right finance options for clients based on their individual needs. “It’s an easy-to-use sales, marketing and lead generation platform designed to help brokers quickly engage, qualify and convert more leads,” says Craig Michie, group executive for client acquisition and asset finance at ScotPac.

ScotPac is Australia and New Zealand’s largest non-bank SME business lender, providing funding to small, medium and large businesses, from start-ups to enterprises exceeding $1bn in revenue. For more than 30 years ScotPac has helped thousands of business owners succeed, offering fast and flexible funding. From simple to complex, small to large, start-up, growth or turnaround, ScotPac can help with a range of funding, from invoice, trade or asset finance to home loans and business loans.

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Craig Michie, ScotPac

Boosting productivity More paperwork normally translates to less time available to maximise value for clients, such as by negotiating the best possible deal or offering a wide range of loan options, and less time to foster relationships that build stable, profitable businesses. According to Equifax’s 2022 Mortgage Broker Industry Pulse Check, some of the biggest broker time wasters are slow lead generation and lengthy application lodgements. “There was a clear gap in the market for a supportive digital community to help brokers make better use of their time to build the best businesses possible,” says Michie. “[The

Craig Michie, ScotPac

Partner Portal] was designed and developed for brokers in consultation with brokers who provided some terrific insights and feedback into what would help their businesses.” He says it “greatly improves the speed of communication with clients and leads and the time required for finance applications and approvals”. It also provides sophisticated, market-leading campaign and marketing tools for free that would cost brokers thousands of dollars if purchased from marketing companies. The customisable social media and email marketing campaigns are designed by some of the best digital marketing minds in the country but are backstopped by ScotPac’s team of BDMs. For brokers new to the platform, the Partner Portal includes a series of video tutorials on areas like how to set up a profile and how to launch marketing campaigns to their clients and leads via email, newsletters and blogs. “The result is that brokers are provided with a virtual support community,” says Michie. “[The platform] also acts like a virtual assistant that can be accessed at any time for things like borrowing capacity calculators, product selector tools and application dashboards.” Uploading application details is simple and fast, and in the case of asset finance the Partner Portal can provide near-instant conditional approvals. “Our market-leading Asset Finance Fast Doc application can deliver instant approvals in as little as 60 seconds for all business types, including sole traders,” says Michie.

Non-bank lending at record share The new tool is helping boost broker productivity as the non-bank share of the lending market grows quickly. “Our latest survey results show that non-bank lending demand [at SMEs] has increased to a record high of 33% marketwide, up 14% year-on-year and more than doubling since September 2018,” says Michie.

The opportunity exists for brokers to review their clients’ existing financial arrangements to help them potentially restructure debt and their loan terms, especially those worried about dealing with annual reviews and revaluations. Brokers can also provide upfront finance support for the thousands of businesses looking to take advantage of government tax incentives for investments in digital technology of up to $100,000.

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“The Partner Portal greatly improves the speed of communication with clients and leads and the time required for finance applications and approvals”

“There are some great opportunities in the market right now, particularly as businesses take stock at the end of the year and make plans for 2023”

While it won’t make you a cappuccino, ScotPac’s Partner Portal makes helping commercial clients so fast and easy brokers will wonder how they did without it

1,200

$BN

1,150

1,100

1,050

$1,018

$1,088

$1,017

$1,098

$1,032

$1,118

$1,028

$1,129

$1,027

$1,142

$1,161

$1,039

$1,048

$1,166

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

2021

2022

YoY change

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+7.0%

+7.9%

+8.3%

+9.9%

+11.2%

+11.8%

+11.3%

Year-on-year growth in commercial lending

$1,052

$1,178

Aug

+12.1%

Michie estimates that a further 3–4% of SMEs want to invest in their businesses but don’t know where to secure finance. This provides a massive opportunity for brokers with access to working capital funders like ScotPac. “There are some great opportunities in the market right now, particularly as businesses take stock at the end of the year and make plans for 2023.” As the economy changes gear and more brokers move into the commercial space, the Partner Portal has been in high demand, and brokers are spreading the word. “We've seen 300% growth in use over the past six months as awareness builds in the broker community,” say Michie. “Much of that growth has been linked to applications for our Asset Finance Fast Doc product which have exploded in the past couple of months.” Alternative working capital products are needed to boost growth, partly by helping offset supply chain disruption as well as the continually increasing operational costs due to inflation and a tight labour market. In the current economy, risk factors such as supply chain issues and labour shortages are hurting business profitability but providing an opening for non-banks to ramp up commercial lending.

33%

Non-bank share of the SME lending market

Source: ScotPac SME Growth Index survey

Source: RBA Bank Lending Classified by Sector – D5 data, Sep 2022

“Around 40% of SMEs we spoke to recently said they intend to take up the additional 20% tax deduction over the next 12 months to support the uptake of digital technologies like e-commerce facilities, CRM systems and cybersecurity measures,” says Michie. Time is of the essence With the economy looking less certain, taking advantage of such opportunities and securing working capital quickly are more urgent tasks for SMEs. ScotPac’s latest biannual SME Growth Index for the six months to October showed revenue growth forecasts from the 700-plus businesses surveyed varied considerably – from +10% to -17%. This is reflective of the uneven impacts of the pandemic and ongoing economic challenges such as inflation. Brokers can’t afford the significant time and revenue drain involved in manually working out which leads are worth pursuing, or chasing clients for unreturned documents. “The Partner Portal puts all the information and all the tools a broker needs to succeed in one place,” says Michie. It's also a living tool in that it’s constantly being updated to meet broker needs. “The Partner Portal will continue to evolve and incorporate new products and content in response to feedback from brokers.” Unfortunately, requests to add coffee-making and foot-massage functions are unlikely to be met any time soon – but ScotPac is no doubt working on it.

IN Partnership with

“There are some great opportunities in the market right now, particularly as businesses take stock at the end of the year and make plans for 2023”

Craig Michie, ScotPac

“There are some great opportunities in the market right now, particularly as businesses take stock at the end of the year and make plans for 2023”

Craig Michie, ScotPac