Ex-Century 21 CEO James Green has been appointed as the general manager of one nationwide fintech’s home loans division.
The fintech Rate Comparison is owned by lead generation specialist Alternative Media with Green taking up the position around four weeks ago.
Green told
Australian Broker he had always had an eye on the fintech space and had decided to make the jump because of where the market was heading.
“People want convenience. People want speed of transaction. I want to provide that,” he said. “It’s an exciting new frontier and I feel that if you don’t get involved, people get left behind.”
Furthermore with fintech simplifying how consumers interact with brokers, the trusted adviser model is dying.
“The home loan distribution model is becoming more and more transactional. While quality of advice will always be in demand, technology will continue to disrupt the home loan process. The benefits gained from convenience are gaining market share over the traditional broking model.”
One priority since starting at Rate Comparison is to expand the broker team to 20 in the next six months. Green has already grown the team from three to six in his first four weeks and is sending out feelers for more.
“We’re looking to hire a number of brokers to service loans as a third party mortgage brokerage. When a potential borrower is on the website, a broker is going to contact that customer right then and there.”
Rate Comparison will work with aggregator
eChoice which is providing backend technology to connect brokers to lenders.
Green has also spent the past few weeks examining how Alternative Media generates its leads and what the quality is like.
“The only way I could do that was to put on a headset, plug into the dialer and start taking leads. What I discovered was very exciting. The lead quality was better than what I was receiving from real estate agents. We have a great business opportunity here.”
While expanding the broker team, Green will also introduce a new distribution model offering a salary and a dual commission model. Brokers can take advantage of this while continuing to operate their existing business, he said. For leads generated by Rate Comparison, brokers can then make the call on behalf of the fintech.
“We are not seeking to attract brokers so we benefit from the clients they self-source. We are confident in the clients we generate for the broker. Therefore, we are willing to regard the self-generated business line as an incremental business line for the broker and as such pay the broker above market commission rates for any self-generated loans.”
Green started as a broker in 1992 and later helped
Mark Bouris grow the Wizard business from six people to 150 branches between 1996 and 2001. He then moved to GE and Allco Finance Group before being hired as the general manager at Oxygen. Prior to joining Rate Comparison, Green was CEO of home loans at 21 Century.
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