The
Finsure Group is riding high. Founded by John Kolenda in 2011,
Finsure’s principal objective was to become the best aggregation business in the industry. Kolenda says his retail finance brokerage is set to achieve its primary goal as broker numbers swell.
Finsure recently announced it had over 700 brokers and a loan book of over $10bn.
Confident this growth will continue, Kolenda says rolling out the industry’s leading electronic lodgement service, ApplyOnline, late last year was a key factor in his strategy.
“Over 50 lenders are available through ApplyOnline, which means our brokers can send applications via our proprietary software system directly into lender partners,” Kolenda says. “Aligning our brokers under our CRM platform with sophisticated electronic lodgement through ApplyOnline has fully integrated the whole system because everything is now bundled together.
“This is of enormous benefit regarding both the compliance and application process.”
Finsure has migrated all its brokers to its new CRM platform and invested in
NextGen.Net’s ApplyOnline to provide the best value proposition.
“Launching ApplyOnline means we now have a fully integrated end-to-end system,” Kolenda declares.
“The experience is a whole lot easier and empowering for brokers because it enables them to get everything correct upfront, which in turn equates to being able to deliver to consumers much more rapidly.
“It has also improved Finsure’s overall efficiency. So it completes the triangle of interaction: customer, broker and lender.”
According to Finsure Group managing director John Kolenda, key advancements in its technology offering have resulted in the company being well on track to crack the top 10 BRW fastest-growing companies in Australia this year.
Last year, BRW magazine’s annual ‘Fast Starters’ list had Finsure ranked at number 18 of the 100 fastest-growing companies in Australia. Finsure was also listed as the third fastest-growing business in the financial services sector after growing its revenue by 140% over the 2014 financial year.
NextGen.Net sales director Tony Carn refers to Finsure as “a dynamic, fast-growing and technology-savvy business”.
“ApplyOnline is a key block in any serious value proposition in the third party Australian market,” Carn says.
“One of the key things in Finsure’s growth scenario was to ensure they had key functionality, and John [Kolenda] recognised the need for ApplyOnline.”
Kolenda was surprised at the ease with which Finsure switched its electronic lodgement service to ApplyOnline.
“For us it’s become a new age of efficiency,” he says.
Kolenda talks of the implementation of an ApplyOnline Broker Centre and the value-added features of ApplyOnline+ (serviceability calculations maintained in real time by lenders and the ability to upload and validate supporting documents, all at the point of sale), giving Finsure an end-to-end system that helps support the whole value chain and each stakeholder within that chain.
“We’ve gained countless efficiencies and improvements, and at the heart of it is the fact it allows the broker to seamlessly interact with numerous stakeholders at any different stage,” he said.
“Plus it enables brokers to customise the system to utilise it in whatever way best suits their own process.”
Finsure is now turning its attention to integrating its other business verticals, like insurance and financial planning, into the one technology solution for all business partners to create one fully integrated one-stop shop for broker clients. Finsure is on track to be a premier aggregator, and Kolenda points to the need to keep up with the speed at which the world is moving.
“There’s a lot of fantastic innovation happening, to deliver better business outcomes and more efficiencies, and if you want to have access to that, ApplyOnline is the natural solution,” he says. “NextGen.Net is constantly innovating, evolving and developing some really impressive and neat stuff, and if you’re not on board with it, you should be!”
