Australia’s newest sub-aggregator Giant Finance Group (GFG) has gotten off to a flying start, signing up 62 brokers attracted to its personalised business model.
Launched on 1 March this year, GFG offers a small scale, more customised service offering for brokers with BDMs available to provide brokers with an answer while the customer is in front of them.
“Our mantra is that we’ve got a two hour service level agreement (SLA) to return all phone calls. We have an in-house team that’s desktop bound that returns all emails pretty much on the spot,” GFG’s CEO Norman Vancuylenberg told
Australian Broker.
The BDM team is also scheduled to go out and meet GFG’s brokers face-to-face on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis as needed while keeping in constant contact with them, he said.
Giant Finance Group currently has three BDMs who get heavily involved in member broker businesses to ensure everyone can overcome industry hurdles, be equipped with the best tools available, and organise appointments with the lender BDMs.
“We hold weekly masterclasses in residential and commercial to make sure that everybody’s skilled across all the different disciplines of mortgage lending.”
Vancuylenberg spoke on the close relationships that GFG had with its brokers at a ground level.
“With the weekly and monthly catch-ups with our brokers, it tends to give us really clear insight into their business. We’re very proactive rather than reactive in their business. We try to set goals and clear pathways for progression in their business rather than just counting numbers.”
Giant Finance Group is also a “true lead generator”, he said, meaning the aggregator understands the need for leads in each broker’s business.
“We don’t use that as blackmail or hold brokers to ransom. It’s an opportunity that we have – it’s a value-add service – and we try wherever possible to assume that service through our brokers.”
The aggregator’s latest May figures show an average of 55 new mortgage leads per month, record monthly submissions of just over $50m, and record monthly settlements of $38.5m. The largest settled loan so far has been a residential mortgage of just over $3m.
“That was May. We’re still in June so we’re looking at 15-20% increase in what we’ve had in previous months.”
With
Finsure as the parent aggregator, Vancuylenberg said that Giant Finance Group sees itself as an extension of the larger company.
“At a ground level, we’re a much smaller version of Finsure. We have a much higher touch and personal approach.”
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