Adele Andrews (pictured) is a strong advocate of a program to empower female brokers at aggregator Finsure.
The Melbourne broker and director of Australian Property Home Loans said the Women in Finsure program had been terrific at supporting female brokers through its regular lender presentations and overall education schedules.
“It is a fabulous forum for women to get together, network, and discuss war stories and strategies as brokers in their day-to-day lives,” Andrews said.
“Through their networking events and supportive frameworks, the program facilitates an environment of equality and the ability to build their business with several resources on offer to assist.”
Read more: Finsure works to fix gender imbalance
Andrews said there were terrific women within the Finsure family all willing to cheer their fellow female colleagues along and support them on their journey towards building a successful brokerage business.
Andrews said she perceived the broking industry to be of high value to society.
“The level of service, choice, education, and value brokers can bring to consumers is incredibly powerful for anyone who seeks to buy a home or invest,” she said.
“I view our participation in the industry as trusted, credible advisors who can offer something to the market that banks cannot, particularly if we are fulfilling our obligation to educate our clients along the way.”
She added that the industry was fun, supportive, friendly, and willing to support both experienced and "new to industry" brokers with welcome arms.
“As someone who had a previous career path before entering the broking industry at a later stage in life, I can honestly say I wish I had done this earlier,” she said.
Andrews said the largest challenge she currently faced was the strong focus on compliance.
“While there is no doubt that this is a good thing overall, ensuring that we, as the broker, are also protected can be quite cumbersome,” she said.
“Ensuring you are up to date with an ever evolving and changing industry and making sure you have completed all required paperwork to demonstrate that you have acted in the client's best interests can also be challenging.”
But Andrews added that while keeping up with various lending policies was hard, Finsure was there to help.
“Finsure is great at supporting brokers via their weekly Lender Blender sessions, where a group of brokers meet with industry reps to learn more about what’s on offer,” she said.
