The term "disruptor" has become a buzzword in the business world, used by every SaaS-y fintech that claims to be revolutionising its industry. In reality, many are just making noise without actually changing anything.
However, the true meaning of disruption lies in the ability to create a permanent and sustainable change in the way an industry operates. In this context, companies like Aussie Home Loans stand up as disruptors.
Along with its rival Wizard Home Loans, Aussie played a pivotal role in transforming the Australian mortgage industry throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
During a fireside chat at the National Finance Brokers Day, industry veterans Mark Bouris AM and James Symond traded stories of past rivalries that shaped mortgage broking into the primary driver of home loans it is today.
In 1992, James Symond founded Aussie Home Loans with his uncle John Symond and Nick Paten as a mortgage provider with the slogan “we’ll save you”.
It was a bold move that undercut the banks, offering 24-hours-a-day service and low interest rates.
This was driven by an aggressive advertising plan that aimed to position Aussie as a household name.
During the fireside chat, Symond recounted a story about these early days.
Aussie once did a full-page advertisement that said, which banks have been ripping you off for years? Along with logos of some banks underneath, Symond recalled.
The answer: All of them really.
“That’s when advertising was so much more fun,” Symond said.
Within days, the calls came in from the banks threatening litigation.
“We pulled them down real quickly, regained our confidence, and posted another one a month later,” Symond said. “We just kept going and just became agitators.”
Around the same time, Bouris recalled watching a news crew on 60 Minutes follow around a fleet of Aussie Home Loans-branded cars.
“I thought, ‘this a PR game’. And that’s why I later went into partnership with Packer because Channel 9 was going to be my PR vehicle. It wasn’t hard for me to get PR.”
By 1996, Bouris launched his own mortgage company, Wizard Home Loans.
The rivalry began.
As an example, Bouris recalled the first ad Wizard Home Loans ever did.
It was a full page on the inside of the Sunday Telegraph.
It read: If you want to beat the banks, go to Aussie. If you want to beat Aussie, go to Wizard.
The best part? According to Bouris, the Telegraph published the wrong phone number for Wizard, so they got two weeks of free advertising.
From Symond’s perspective, Bouris and Wizard Home Loans came out of nowhere.
And throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, the companies traded blows as two of the biggest mortgage dealers in the country.
“Every time that these guys announce something, literally within three to four hours I’d go and announce exactly the same thing… even if we didn’t have it,” Bouris said.
Symond responded, “it was a sore point”.
“We’d go and spend months and zillions of dollars developing an idea. Finally, we’d get there and launch it after months and months of preparation,” he said. “And the next day, bugalugs here would go, ‘oh I’ve got one of those’.
“He’d launch it. It would never come to fruition, but he got great press out of it.
“John would go, ‘don’t worry about it, head forward.’ The competition is with the big banks… but it still pissed me off.”
Needless to say, Symond respected the game.
“He was so clever at doing that. So clever at getting PR. And don’t forget he came out of nowhere and his PR has been superb.”
By 2003, Aussie Home Loans began to divest its loan book and reposition itself as a mortgage broker.
Symond wanted the messaging on point.
“We had specific scripts to ensure the customers had confidence that we weren’t going to go broke,” he said. “After a while, most other mortgage brokers, their scripts were ‘we’re like Aussie’.”
This was because Aussie was spending between $15 million to $20 million a year on marketing and advertising, according to Symond.
“And we’d probably get the same amount with John standing on his soap box,” Symond recalled about his uncle.
“That was for Aussie but that was for the industry as well. The industry did very well with John standing on his soap box saying this is who we are.”
Symond said Bouris also propped up the industry’s reputation… he just went about it in a different way.
Coined in the 1990s by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, the disruptor concept was quickly adopted by Silicon Valley influencing the likes of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Andy Grove.
According to the Christiansen Institute, a thinktank for policymakers and part of Christiansen’s legacy:
“Disruptive Innovations are NOT breakthrough technologies that make good products better; rather, they are innovations that make products and services more accessible and affordable, thereby making them available to a larger population.”
In that sense, Aussie and Wizard were disruptors before anyone knew what disrupting was.
“There was no concept or understanding of disruption,” Bouris said. “Effectively, disruption meant a permanent and sustainable change in a way an industry operates.”
“Here we are in 2024 sitting in front of 500 mortgage brokers… 30 years ago we couldn’t do that,” Bouris said to the crowd at National Finance Brokers Day.
“You are here permanently today delivering 74% of all mortgages in the country to the banking system while the banks are closing down their branches. That is true disruption. Real true disruption.”
Symond agreed.
“It’s extraordinary the industry that we are all in – this industry called mortgage broking.
“I know the industry is going through a tough time that’s for sure in different ways, but the light is as bright as ever in terms of the future of the industry.”
