There is a romantic element to a broker’s role to customers and the wider community, says Mario Rehayem,
Pepper Money’s managing director of Australian mortgages and personal loans.
“It may sound a bit corny but you are the cupid of the financial industry. Your role is to marry up a product with that customer’s needs; not pigeonhole yourself to one lender, one credit policy, or one type of borrower persona. It’s not what brokering is about.”
Speaking at Pepper’s National Insights Roadshow in Sydney yesterday (20 June), Rehayem urged brokers to be mindful of competition, warning that if they could not service a customer with special needs, another broker likely could.
This means brokers could miss out on future referral bases by ignoring or being unable to deal with these types of clients, he said.
Rehayem urged brokers to understand all the lenders on their panel.
“This is not just about Pepper. This is about you understanding what’s available to you so then you can service your customers.”
An unfortunate fact
Rehayem also discussed how brokers build up their business, saying the wrong milestones were often targeted.
“The unfortunate piece of our industry is that our [broker] business is hinged just on a back book. Most of us here will only have a trial book to sell and that is the wrong way to set up your business.”
Instead, he suggested focusing on two compartments: creating a lead generating business as well as building the trail book.
“When it comes [to that time] when you say ‘I’ve had enough. I want to spend more time with my grandkids. I want to go and tour the world,’ you need to be able to not just rely on the multiple you’re going to get on your trail book.”
Making the business a lead generating business will show the potential procurer how many leads are brought in per month and the precise value that this creates.
A full house
Despite a rainy Tuesday morning, the final count for the Roadshow tipped over 428 in attendance, Rehayem told
Australian Broker.
“This is a record for Sydney and New South Wales, and takes our national total to circa 1,500 brokers that have attended which is an exceptional result.”
For the 2018 event, the Pepper Roadshow in Melbourne will move to a new location after this year’s venue was full to capacity. This continues the event’s evolution.
“For us, it’s been a great journey over the past three years with our roadshows. The last two years have been about building more information on where brokers can focus their marketing strategies, where the non-conforming customer lies, showing them real factual data about how many customers are actually getting missed opportunities, and what the size of the market is.
“The constant responses and feedback from brokers over the past two years is that while you’ve shown us all this great information, we really need you to start talking more about your products and your credit policies.”
Pepper took this feedback and split up this year’s roadshow, delivering statistics and figures about consumers while also lifting the bonnet on the lender’s credit policies and procedures as well as the investment Pepper has put into technology, Rehayem said.
“We’ll hopefully give enough insights for brokers to truly understand how many more customers they can take home. We have a strong belief that every consumer deserves a second chance, every customer should be given their options, and the only way that can happen is if a broker truly understands the array of lenders they have on their panel.”
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