Melbourne Storm will launch their own branded home loan and personal loan service on Thursday to become one of the first sporting clubs in Australia to offer members access to financial products.
The Storm, which lost to the Canberra Raiders in the first week of the NRL finals series last weekend, is launching Storm Money in partnership with the private My Local Broker, and will also offer car financing solutions.
My Local Broker will be the funder of the loans, and it and the Storm will share commissions from deals brokered on behalf of Storm members through a dedicated online portal. The club also plans to extend the offerings to retail, small business and commercial loans.
Storm chief executive Dave Donaghy said the concept arose from a survey of the club’s 25,000 members this year about their financial priorities.
“We looked at our sponsorship portfolio and found we had a gap in the banking sector,” Mr Donaghy said.
“So we asked our members questions like how many had home loans and whether they would be looking to switch a home loan to another provider in the next 12 months, and if they’d look favourably at a Storm offering or a partner of the Storm.
“We found there was a clear demand for this, and looked at our options and went and got the necessary approvals. Delivering meaningful savings to our members is fundamentally important and we believe we have a model that will compete with the traditional lending market.”
Almost 40 per cent of Storm members have home loans and close to 60 per cent told the club they were looking to refinance within a year, with 40 per cent saying they’d be likely or highly likely to change if offered an exclusive deal from a Storm sponsor.
“It is no secret a club like ours has to look for different revenue streams, and if we can do that and get a good deal for our members, and they save some money from it, then it is a win-win situation,” Mr Donaghy said.
“And any money we make from this will go back in our football program. Our owners have never taken dividends from the club as payment.”
My Local Broker is owned by Gerry Ryan, a part-owner and director of the Storm and owner of the Jayco caravan manufacturing business that accounts for the bulk of his $488m fortune on The List — Australia’s Richest 250.
“We call them the rate chasers in that they go out and find the best rates for their customers,” Mr Ryan said. “I’ve been involved with it for four years now, and it is a good business and it has deals with about 40 or so different loan providers.”
Mr Ryan said Jayco acted as a barometer for discretionary spending habits — “We’re the first into a recession and first out of it” — and described sales conditions as tough earlier this year. “But in the past six weeks our sales are ahead of what they were in the same time last year, so there is certainly signs of a recovery.”
Mr Donaghy said the Storm would go close to breaking even this year, depending on the finals results. The club plays Parramatta in an elimination final on Saturday. The Storm will also look in the off-season to revisit its plan to sell shares in the club to its fans, under a plan for it to sell a minority stake to members — a first for an Australian team.
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