Toni Lamb has trekked across the world to find her current role serving the travel industry
By her own admission, Toni Lamb came to the mortgage industry in Australia through a circuitous route. She started by launching a home loan business in Singapore.
“I had in my previous role in property been managing quite a few clients in the property management space. I decided to leave that role and go to Singapore. I noticed in a few trips over there that they were very much behind us in terms of financial products. For instance, they didn’t have line of credit products, which were very popular over here at the time. So, basically I went over there and started my own mortgage business,” she said.
Lamb explained that in Singapore, the banks serve as a second mortgagee to the government, which owns the actual mortgage. Compulsory super contributions in Singapore, she further explained, are up to around 22%, and Singaporeans can use this account to invest in shares or property.
“I showed them how to utilise an overdraft and how they could buy property utilising an overdraft. I did that for a couple of years and then took it one step further, and did a lot of work behind getting one particular bank on board to really get the market moving,” she said.
Upon returning to Australia, Lamb took up a role with Macquarie.
“It gave me the tools to understand brokers’ businesses and the positives and negatives of their businesses,” she said.
As she gained this understanding, she decided to move into a mortgage role.
“I worked for a smaller boutique and got my Cert IV and did my Diploma, and then I left there and set up my own broking business for 12 months and got some understanding. I found it difficult doing the marketing component,” she said.
It was then that Lamb came upon Moneywise Global Home Loans, a provider that serves the employees, family and friends of Flight Centre. As Home Loans Team Leader for the company, she said the arrangement gave her a massive pool of potential customers.
“I don’t think anyone else out there is doing it. We have a financial planning business, tax business and mortgage business. Flight Centre has about 10,000 staff,” she said.
While her role has opened a new source of leads and referrals, she said it’s still important for brokers to make sure they look after their existing clients.
“I suppose it’s the old adage that when you look at your current client database you’ve got to make sure you’ve got a great retention program in place. We all do hard work to get our clients, but then we can tend to forget about them,” she said.
This feature is from Issue 11.14 of Australian Broker. Download the issue to read more!
