The chairman of
Loan Market says the group's move into financial planning has been misreported.
Loan Market chairman, Sam White spoke with
Australian Broker to set the record straight and outline their strategy.
White clarified that though Loan Market is a part of the Ray White Group, they are still separate businesses, and the launch of the financial planning arm – Wealth Market – is completely driven by Loan Market.
“When the news broke, it was reported that it was a Ray White initiative, but it is really driven by Loan Market. The reason behind the decision to launch Wealth Market was to offer services that protected our clients’ homes and mortgages in the event of misfortune.
“Unfortunately, the story came out as Ray White launching a planning arm to promote investment in property to boost the real estate business’ revenue, but that is far from the truth.”
White said the Wealth Market advisors will not be able to offer property to clients.
“The business will be specialising in risk sales based on the lending transaction, to insure the clients’ mortgage debt. It is not there to sell Ray White property.”
The way the group is structured will see Loan Market and Wealth Market as two separate vertical channels that will have a business partnership with each other, White says.
“The advice will be separate – some brokers and planners might decide to join ventures and operate from a practice together, but there will be a distinction between the mortgage broker business and the planner business. They will not be doing both, it will be a partnership between the two.
“We also don’t want to mandate that all Loan Market brokers have to refer to Wealth Market, but we want our brokers to recommend risk and protection to clients. Whether they refer the client to a Wealth Market advisor or another advisor they already have a relationship with doesn’t matter, as long as they are talking about risk. This just gives our brokers more options.”
The feedback they have been receiving from Loan Market brokers has been very positive, said White.
“There has been a fair bit of excitement to be able to offer a more holistic approach to looking after their clients.”
Talking about goals and objectives over the coming year, White says they are happy to be taking it slow.
“We would rather take it slower to make sure the systems are right, make sure that we are delivering on our customer value proposition and as we get more confident we will grow it more. For the first year, we will have about 10-15 planners come on board and then we will go from there,” he told
Australian Broker.
