ANZ's unsolicited loan offer to client surprises adviser
ANZ makes an unsolicited loan offer to a customer which is more than the borrower could afford.
Friday, September 25th 2015, 1:43PM 
1 Comment
A letter, supplied to TMM Online by a mortgage adviser, offers his client a conditional loan approval of $700,000 just by looking at the person's bank records.
The adviser, who we have chosen not to name to protect the identity of the client, said he was surprised to see the letter as his client hadn't applied for a loan with ANZ, and the offer was unsolicited.
He said using ANZ's lending criteria the client was probably only likely to get a loan of up to $500,000.
His biggest concern is that ANZ appeared to be ignoring the Responsible Lending code which requires lenders to make sure that borrowers can afford the loan and could repay it.
He also thought the rate offered (60 basis points off the carded 18-month rate) wasn't that good, and the cash incentive of $2000 for a loan of that size wasn't particularly generous.
There were also concerns that this sort of marketing reeked of the sort of behaviour credit card providers and personal finance companies used to use in the past.
ANZ choose not to discuss the letter. However, through a spokesperson it said: "We can’t discuss individual customer details. The letter states an indicative amount that the customer could borrow and is not a formal approval."
"The indicative approval is based on the financial information ANZ holds. The customer is still required to go through a full lending application, which is subject to our lending criteria, including enough funds to contribute to the deposit."
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I have seen numerous examples of this over the last 15+ years as an Adviser, and am never surprised at the degree in which Banks will go to for new business, including blatent poor advice and in some cases misleading offers. In terms of a Conditional Offer, this would normally indicate a level of assessment has been made already, and when coming from your bank, one would think they have assessed your income and borrowing capacity having access to your income and likely savings history?
All the more reason for regulation to include all people giving financial advice should be regulated, and operate under the same rules.