Leading brokerage Shore Financial has announced a major restructure, including the appointment of a chief executive officer, as it transitions from a small Sydney-based brokerage to a large interstate financial services organisation.
Theo Chambers, who co-founded Shore Financial with Alex Nochar in 2013, has been promoted to the newly created CEO position. Speaking to Australian Broker, Chambers said the decision to create a CEO role was a strategic one to help the business capitalise on its impressive growth over the last three years.
“The problem previously was that Alex and I were both trying to manage the business whilst both also still broking. In the first couple of years this was a necessity for the business to stay profitable because Alex and my volume was bringing in revenue for the business to enable us to expand."
“It was also important that Alex and I, as founders of the business, were representing the business in terms of broking. But it came to the point where we decided to take myself off as being the number one loan writer to then actually teach other people all the ways of integrating our services into real estate which I learnt myself.
“Long term we are trying to move from a small brokerage culture to a large organisational structure.”
Nochar will remain as managing director and senior loan writer, focusing on the day-to-day business and technical aspects of mortgage broking such as policy and products, freeing up Chambers in his new role to focus on strategy, culture and growth.
According to Chambers, his main focus this year will be to deepen its referral relationships and improve Shore’s business infrastructure and processes.
“Our goals this calendar year would be to really increase our penetration of the real estate industry… We feel with the right integration and focus, we can not only significantly improve our loan volumes but more importantly generate reciprocal business for our real estate partners in the form of listing opportunities and property management referrals.
“Secondly, we would like to improve our business infrastructure and the processes we have in place to support our brokers. We are already hiring a marketing manager and in the process of customising new systems to enhance our broker offering by marketing and lead generation strategies . We are also in the process of amalgamating all of our systems to slipstream the process and increase efficiency across our whole business. While Alex will manage compliance, operations and the board.”
Along with Chambers’ new appointment, Shore Financial broker Thomas Hawley has been promoted to director and partner.
“[Tom] is one of our stand out performers and has been with us from almost day one. He has always been a team player, making sure he helps people around him and not just himself. His recent promotion to partner means he’ll obviously now sit on our board and take a more proactive role in the management of our business. Tom’s highly qualified background and amazing achievements in broking will help focus our long term direction of the business” Chambers told Australian Broker.
“He has already been a big part in managing our business, especially within financial planning. He was previously in funds management and has completed an undergraduate and master’s degree and has the right attitude to top it off.”
