The broker channel is in a unique position: while volumes have perhaps never been higher, the demands on brokers’ time, energy and resources have seen workloads and stress rise to similarly stratospheric levels.
While brokers can control their own workloads, they are often at the whim of lenders and their ongoing issues with turnaround times. That’s where the aggregator can come in.
For major aggregators like Finsure, handling these pain points can be the key to success and has certainly proven their ability to assist brokers, and to fight their corner with lenders.
Finsure was rewarded with strong results, posting a 42% rise in settlements in their financial results, published last week. With that in mind, Australian Broker sat down with managing director John Kolenda to discuss the role that aggregators can play in backing their brokers to success.
He started by reflecting on the recent financial results, and paying tribute to the broker channel that helped to deliver such success.
“A lot of the credit has to go to our brokers on the front line,” said Kolenda. “They’ve faced enormous challenges during these unprecedented times, with many of them in a lockdown situation, but they’ve been able to work hard, diligently, and adapt to the changes.”
“We’ve seen the productivity of our brokers increase quite dramatically. We know that they’ve been able to navigate their way through these difficult times and remain focused on helping their customers.”
“They’ve been helping a lot of them through hardship. Some have been going through refinancing and helping consumers get better deals, and then those customers that are buying properties that are homes or investments, and broker have stepped up to work hard, they’ve changed and adapted quickly to see their productivity and volumes go up. The credit has to go to those brokers around the country.”
Finsure has set out to be the brokers’ friend, and has been rewarded by growing numbers within the channel choosing them as their aggregator.
“Finsure’s vision is really simple: to make a positive difference to the lives of our brokers,” said Kolenda. “That’s where the company starts from. We know that our role is there to support our brokers in any way we can.”
“That’s there in the investment that we’ve done in tech over the last three or four years: we did a group up build of tech, which in itself has been a valuable tool for our brokers to help them become more efficient, to interact better with their customers and lenders, and to utilise tools to maximise opportunities.”
“The starting point is our focus on our brokers. It’s a B2B model and we look to build out: whether through tech, whether marketing support and website development for brokers, whether training, which we do constantly or whether it’s keeping them engaged through difficult times.”
“The clear focus is: what do we need to do to help our brokers? Where do we think we can add value and support them? No matter what challenge or what difficulty they encounter, that’s the role that we play and it helps us to build a better business long term.”
“Brokers will vote through the support of their aggregator. We’re seeing them stay, we’re seeing them happy and their productivity and volumes is a reflection of all that.”
Kolenda explained that that support was happening at both the macro level, going into bat for the channel with lenders, and at the micro level, assisting brokers to help their customers.
“It’s both strategic level and all the way down to the little things that you actually do,” he said. “People forget that a broker faces a challenge which is close to home: they have a customer that needs to meet a certain deadline.”
“We will actively get involved in supporting that broker with that individual customer. That could be making calls to BDMs, stake managers or general managers. If there’s a real need where somebody is facing a challenge, we’re not afraid to get into helping a broker at the customer level. It starts off with the little things.”
“Then there’s the strategic things, like simplifying the BID process and implementing a process that will make it easier for brokers to execute BID and making it easier for them to engage their customers through that process, or monitoring lenders and enabling back channel communications to brokers that gives them an idea of where turnaround times sit.”
“It’s the little things, which are really important, all the way to that strategic element. You have to keep your eye on every aspect. I was a broker, I used to write loans. I understand the difficulties and challenges that brokers face, and you have to be able to support them in any area that is necessary to help them.”
