Bluestone scales back NZ business

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Australian non-bank lender Bluestone has radically restructured its New Zealand business and now has just two business development managers based in this country.

Thursday, July 6th 2023, 8:42AM 1 Comment

Luke Roberts, national Select partnership manager, acknowledged the current position and that some staff had been laid off as a result, although he refused to provide numbers, but said others had been redeployed to work for the Australian business.

Mike Kinley is the other remaining local staffer and is business development manager BDMs for the South Island.

Amongst the redundancies is Sue Griffiths who headed up the New Zealand sales operation.

Sydney-based head of marketing, Katie Bell, also avoided answering the question of how many people had been made redundant, but TMM's own reporting can identify at least three BDMs had been employed in NZ since 2021 who no longer work for Bluestone.

Bell explained the situation as Bluestone having “repositioned its business to focus on those New Zealanders who are overlooked and underserved by the banks and help them to realise their dream of home ownership.”

But Bluestone has always operated in the non-conforming lending space, particularly focusing on the self-employed, those with a checkered credit history and low-doc lending.

“With this revised approach, we have also changed the way we support our critically important relationships with advisers and brokers,” Bell explained.

“We are 100% committed to supporting mortgage advisers and brokers,” she said.

“What’s the core of our relationship? Simply put, we’re here to help advisers and brokers service more customers and grow their business, and we do that through our BDMs, our products, our credit policy and how we service the applications brokers lodge with us, plus a recently launched dedicated adviser support service.”

The man who used to oversee the NZ operations, Peter Wood, left Bluestone early this year after two decades with the company.

Bluestone has form in abandoning NZ when the going gets tough.

Wood relaunched in NZ in 2018 after Bluestone abandoned the country for a decade after the GFC

But both Roberts and Bell insist that Bluestone isn't abandoning NZ again now.

On Tuesday, Bluestone “announced 12 major changes to help make it easier to do business with Bluestone. Also, we know it has become exceedingly difficult for brokers to qualify new customers because of the high interest rates, so next week we will be announcing interest rate cuts of up to 0.50% to our prime and near-prime products,” Bell said.

Given how depressed the housing market is, it isn't surprising that non-bank lenders generally have been doing it tough lately.

Another Australia-based non-bank lender, Resimac, has also been downsizing. NZ general manager Luke Jackson was reluctant to provide numbers but did confirm there has been restructuring and layoffs.

Local firm Avanti Finance has also shrunk its staffing levels compared with 18 months ago, chief executive Mark Mountcastle confirmed.

But Mountcastle said Avanti is a diversified lender “and we do more than just housing loans. We haven't been scaling back as a result of the drop in mortgage activity.”

Avanti's other main line of business is motor vehicle finance.

Tags: Bluestone

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