Alliance Premium Funding, the New Zealand offshoot of Australian premium funder Centrepoint Alliance, is now open for business for Kiwi brokers with Mark Kreling appointed as its national manager business development.
Kreling, who will start after spending more than five years working as relationship manager at Macquarie Pacific Funding, is due to start on 3 August 2015.
Kreling has also previously worked as a broker for
Rothbury Insurance Brokers and
Apex General Insurance.
Centrepoint Alliance Premium Funding CEO Bob Dodd told
Insurance Business he was delighted with the appointment.
“Mark’s got a great deal of experience and a great track record of success within New Zealand,” he said.
“He has already built up trust over the years personally so it’s really about focusing on delivery of high quality local service backed by operational excellence from his support team within Alliance Premium Funding. We intend to support Mark and make regular visits to help him do that.”
Indeed, Dodd said they had already toured the country twice since first announcing the
introduction of Alliance Premium Funding to New Zealand in May.
“We visited metropolitan as well as regional/rural businesses so we could get a clear understanding of local needs and what we’ve identified is there are differentials across the country. We definitely respect the fact it’s not all Auckland-centric business.”
Dodd said he made a surprising discovery during these tours.
“It didn’t seem like a lot of brokers have been visited very often, especially in the regional/rural areas, and we need to do that ensuring we add value in those visits, helping brokers find ways of improving their funding proposition to their clients.
“From a service perspective, that’s something we like to do in person.”
Alliance Premium Funding could boast a couple of other differentials, Dodd said, including accepting credit cards and flexible payment arrangements that could be made by weekly, fortnightly, monthly or quarterly instalments.
“We’ve also launched online applications which means that a broker can send a loan document to a customer wherever they are in the country and that customer can accept those terms and conditions online.
“That cuts down the wait time for brokers to get a commitment from their customer and therefore cuts down the outstanding debtor list in the broker’s office as well.
“So we’re trying to make things faster and quicker for brokers and their business processes which then illustrates efficiencies to their customer.”
He said the number of brokers signing up was starting to really pick up since the official launch at the beginning of July.
“All we’ve got to do is prove ourselves now, and not just on the first transaction but on every transaction.”
