Regional Investment Corporation – Loans to build a stronger regional Australia
As part of the Australian Government’s commitment to encourage growth, investment and resilience in Australia’s regional communities, the Regional Investment Corporation (RIC) administers the delivery of loans for farm businesses and national water infrastructure.
There are currently three types of loans for farm businesses:
- Farm investment loans – Loans to improve the strength, resilience and profitability of farm businesses.
- Drought loans – Loans to help preparing for, manage through or recover from drought.
- AgRebuild loan (North Qld flood) – a disaster recovery loan to help flood-affected Qld farmers restock, replant and recover.
RIC engaged Perform to redevelop the existing AgRebuild loan application form as it was proving difficult to complete and was not gathering the required data, resulting in forms being returned and/or staff having to contact applicants for further information. We were also engaged to develop new application forms for Drought and Farm Investment loans.
To gain a full understanding of the project, Perform gathered as much background research as possible about the agency, the business requirements for the forms, user situations and user requirements, the application processes and the various organisations involved in that process and associated documents. Armed with this knowledge we undertook an expert review of the existing AgRebuild Loan application form, and worked with stakeholders and users to identify problem areas and issues within the AgRebuild form.
The findings from this process drove the redevelopment of the new AgRebuild Loan application form, closely followed by the Drought and Farm Investment application forms. The new forms include simplified information, are easy to understand and allow suitable space for answers – they’ve been developed with the users as the priority, with a view to making a relatively complex process as simple as possible. The forms are available as fillable PDFs that can be completed on screen, or printed and completed by hand.
Feedback received recently from RIC…
‘We’ve had such great feedback on our application forms’
‘Sue and the Perform team did a tremendous job helping to redesign our loan application forms. Sue simplified and shortened the form without compromising the information we were gathering. The feedback from our clients and stakeholders has been fantastic. We couldn’t have done this without you, Sue! Thank you.’
For information about the design of the loan applications or our forms design services, contact Perform on 02 6162 0618.
For information about RIC and the loans for farmers, go to https://www.ric.gov.au/farmers.