Financial advisory firm
Astute Ability Group and mortgage brokerage Home Loan Connexion have launched a collaboration,
Astute Connexion, that aims to help brokers stop “haemorrhaging” clients to the banks.
Mhairi MacLeod, founder and principal of Astute Ability Group, told
Australian Broker that she and Tracy Kearey, managing director of Home Loan Connexion, had been discussing the partnership for around 12 months.
“We looked at a hole in Tracy’s business – she has 40 brokers with her that she manages and runs for home loans – and a hole in my business which is I don’t do home loans.”
Broker surveys and roundtable discussions were held to ensure everyone was on-board. Several pilot programs were also held successfully at the end of last year with Astute Connexion finally holding its soft launch last Friday (3 February) to around 30 brokers in Brisbane.
The partnership allows Home Loan Connexion’s brokers, who write home loans but don’t do specialised lending, to access Astute Ability resources around these products. In this way, brokers can retain clients who may have otherwise been stolen by the banks when seeking niche lending products, MacLeod said.
“Let’s bring it back in house and gel the two together. We’ve stopped the haemorrhaging out of mortgage brokers and also given them cash flow. They’ve now got additional income and support for their home loan businesses while their clients are well looked after by Astute Connexion.”
Astute Ability Group will be in charge of running this collaboration with these brokers, she said.
“It’s a perfect collaboration within the industry to keep it all within the industry.”
While the mortgage brokers involved are likely to focus on their home loan books, Astute Connexion gives them access to resources to form a more consistent income stream.
“It’s really rats and mice stuff that would normally go to the bank because the broker’s not doing it,” MacLeod said. “Things like your typical car loans. From that it branches out into business loans and personal loans.”
“The broker’s earning an income without having a heavy outlay of infrastructure such as staff and backend. Also, they’re not weighed down with having to have the extensive knowledge that my team has to pull a deal together, paint the picture to the lender and resource that lender to that particular scenario.”
When a mortgage broker passes on the contact details of their clients through Astute Connexion, these will be stored in a database that is flagged to that particular broker. This means clients will never be poached by anyone else, MacLeod promised.
“We remarket it to that client on the broker and the client’s mission. We also send them updates on car, equipment, self-employed funding, etc so we’re doing all that backend for them. In a sense, it’s like a mini-aggregation within two groups.”
MacLeod said that Astute Connexion would love new brokers to join now that the launch has been completed.
“We would be more than happy to talk to any other brokers especially those who maybe have one or two man band shows that don’t have the infrastructure that we already have in place. We can show them how it can work for them.”
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