When John Kolenda established Finsure a decade ago, he did so from the view of a mortgage broker – “If I was a broker, what would be all the things be I would value?” So, how does the aggregator business look after its brokers and make them feel they are not on their own?
Kolenda said he put together a group of people with a lot of expertise, so they could help brokers in different ways.
“Brokers from time to time look for different sorts of solutions or different sorts of support depending on where they are in their lifecycle, so we wanted to have a team with extensive experience and expertise across all that gambit – whether it’s marketing, having a very good commission splits structure with options you know, that’s one of the things,” Kolenda said.
The Finsure leader noted that as brokers grow up, their needs change.
“It might be higher commissions. They don’t feel they need as much support,” Kolenda said. “So, I think a flexible commission structure, also allowing them the freedom to tap into the services that we provide whenever they need it, and down to the little things, that personal touch.”
Kolenda said their support for brokers runs from the little things that matter to the more strategic things.
“Like when the broker says, ‘I’ve got a client and their settlement’s due tomorrow and he’s having problems with the settlement’ – that’s part of our responsibility,” Kolenda said. “You’re not on your own. We’ll get involved to try and help that customer… We had a lot of white label marketing. We do website development and hosting. So really, it’s about tapping into an aggregator as your central source of services that you might need no matter where you are. If you’re a professional service, you want more detailed business planning guidance or down at the micro level, we’ve got that whole gambit of services that help brokers.”
Kolenda also said “technology will be a key part of helping brokers.” Investments in technology included hiring a data scientist and rebuilding and launching of its Infynity CRM.
