After winning some of the top awards at the Australian Mortgage Awards, one broker group has explained how they are helping brokers grow and why they want to lead industry change before it’s changed for them.
Loan Market picked up the award for aggregator of the year (over 500 brokers) at the event in Sydney on 19 October.
It’s Bayside franchise also picked up Brokerage of the Year (1-5 staff) and broker Josh Bartlett took home Australian Broker of the Year and Broker of the Year – Productivity.
The group’s executive chairman, Sam White, said the night was a great relief after the intensity of the last few months.
The AMAs judges picked up on Loan Market’s new CRM and training programs, as well as its commitment to lead industry change and acting in the best interests of the customer.
During the Royal Commission, White, who is a member of the Combined Industry Forum (CIF), encouraged the industry to make several changes before the commission made the changes for them.
Explaining to Australian Broker why that was, he said, “I think there are things the industry can do better. But the people who are responsible for doing the job always have the best ideas on how to improve it.
“I think everyone wants to get a good outcome for customers, no matter who you represent. The problem is if you don’t understand what you’re regulating, you often get the wrong end of the stick.
“They have all the best intentions but they’ll do things that have unintended consequences.”
Asked about how the broker group supported its brokers and brokerages, particularly through a difficult period for the industry, White put it down to the culture and training.
He said, “All good brokerages work very hard and I think there’s no question that work ethic and discipline is a core hallmark of all the brokers.
“What we try to build is a culture where people can share ideas and feel safe to ask questions and challenge themselves and challenge others.
“When Josh Bartlett first started he did an amazing amount of work. What he did was learn from really good brokers at the time and in turn passed on that learning to others.
“He runs our brokers boot camp and has been very generous with his time and sharing those insights because he knows that when he started he had the same benefit and it’s a bit of paying it forward.
“It’s 100% down to the work he does, but he then shares those learnings with others. It’s a really great sign of our industry and of our group.”
Looking further at the training Loan Market offers, the brokerage recently had Harvard Business School Professor Boris Groysberg spending the day with brokers to go through leadership skills and business structures.
White added, “We think all good companies all great companies at the heart are really good training companies. We now do a lot of training for brokers and not just how to do home loans, but how to be better business people.
“If you get training right, it solves all your compliance problems. It takes a lot of that uncertainty out of it. It also means brokers will be more productive. We saw that this year. We saw productivity increase. We wrote more with fewer brokers.”
