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Capta Financial founder Alvie Oliveira has put the success of his “strongly niched” residential brokerage business down to focusing on a client segment where “nobody else wanted to look”.
The business also now helps its existing client base when they are buying their second, third and fourth properties, thanks to an Education Club initiative supporting clients to upgrade their local property footprint.
Oliveira said that, after arriving in Australia in 2016 and working at CANE Financial, he found it hard to break into the well-established local market, despite strong finance experience in America.
He told Australian Broker he started looking in areas other brokers were not focusing on, including LMI deals, home and land packages, and the ins and outs of incentives for first home buyers.
“Then I started educating these [new permanent residents and citizen] clients as to how this journey could take place, and trying to make it a little bit less foreign to them,” Oliveira said.
Launching in 2020, the single broker business is on track to write between $130 million and $160 million during 2024, a year-on-year growth of between 15% and 20% compared with 2023.
Social media and digital marketing has been critical to Capta Financial’s growth in Oliveira’s chosen niche, as the brokerage guides clients through the challenges of the local property market.
“There’s a long journey for them, getting all the PRs and citizenships ready and whatnot,” Olveira said. “We use social media channels to educate all of them until they are ready, so that they feel comfortable once they are ready to reach out.”
The business also manages a full calendar of webinars and seminars throughout the year.
“That's actually something I plan every December; we plan the entire year in terms of webinars and seminars. I have two more seminars to do this month in the Gold Coast, for instance,” said Oliveira.
“We cater for the entire Australia; being able to do a lot of these meeting online, it helps that, when clients spread the word, we can assist clients who are based pretty much everywhere.”
Capta Financial has also made seeking and acting on customer feedback a central part of its business, in an effort to continually improve the proposition it provides its clients over time.
“It’s about where and how we can do better, what are the pain points for the client?” Oliveira said.
“Every single client gets surveyed, not only once the deal is over; we survey every single client that leaves, we survey every single pre-approval that doesn’t proceed. After every single hire we make or change in process we do, we take into account the feedback received.”
Oliveira, who has eight support staff, including two based in the Philippines, said having a team behind him that “has a voice” was also a key aspect of the brokerage’s success.
“It’s common in the industry to be a one-man-band, but having a team behind you that will have their feedback listened to and implemented is something we're really proud of.”
Oliveira said two key senior roles in the business – an operations manager and a customer support manager – had “really helped” the business on its growth trajectory in recent years.
The team also engaged the services of Jason Back from Broker Essentials, which won the NAB Best Industry Service at the AMAs, as a business coach to help Capta Financial scale its growth.
“I wasn't expecting to win [at the AMAs], we would have been happy to be finalists. The guys that there were finalists have really successful businesses, so this really did humble us,” Oliveira said.
