While the COVID-19 pandemic may have closed borders across Australia, the rapid digitisation of the financial services industry has had the opposite effect – disintegrating boundaries that previously limited the scope of what a finance broker could achieve.
According to Mhairi MacLeod, owner and principal broker at Astute Ability Group in regional New South Wales, the events of the past several months have been a particularly “thrilling breakthrough” for regional brokers.
“With all the digital change and progress we’ve seen this year, it doesn’t matter where clients are based. I’m not a ‘regional broker’ anymore; I’m dealing with regional clients, yes, but also clients in metro areas and clients in every other state,” she explained.
“We’ve embraced the velocity of change and adopted a ‘can do’ attitude to lead our clients through the chaos. Once we hunkered down and committed to making it work, we realised this year has brought unprecedented opportunity.”
While MacLeod was servicing clients across the country even before the events of this year, the last six months have produced “better tools and better technology” to support them; further, she’s been able to reallocate the time she spent catching 57 flights in 2019 to jumping on the phone instead, mining her existing interstate database for referrals to help spread her footprint further afield.
“Whether a broker is doing resi, commercial or equipment lending, there are so many new connections to start drilling into in this new era,” said MacLeod.
“If you’re asking the right questions, broker businesses should currently be increasing by at least 10%.
“Clients already on your books are going to have family and friends spread across the country. Brokers who wouldn’t dabble interstate before because of the need for face to face interactions can now pursue the option.”
The approach MacLeod has adopted at Astute Ability Group has clearly proven effective; last month, she was not only named Regional Broker of the Year and Broker of the Year – Specialist Lending at the 2020 Australian Mortgage Awards, but she bagged the top title of Australian Broker of the Year, in further confirmation that spectacular success is not reserved for brokers based in Australia’s largest metropolitan areas alone.
To MacLeod, it’s clear that brokers being freed from the constraints of requiring geographical proximity to their customers will both deliver more choice to Aussie consumers and further professionalise the industry as a whole.
“Before, an area might have two or three well-known brokers; now, with more brokers being able to access that customer pool, competition will be heightened and all players will need to upskill to draw in and keep those clients,” MacLeod said.
With this view, all parties – borrower and broker alike – stand to benefit from the rapid deterioration of the line separating the regional from the metropolitan.
