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Antony Field [00:00:08] Hello and welcome to Australian Broker's Virtual Roundtable. This is a partnership with Liberty, a great sponsor of ours talking about Australia's fastest growing mortgage brokerages for 2023. I'm Antony Field, Editor of Australian Broker, representing Liberty. As I said, the proud sponsor of Australian Broker. Fast Brokerages for 2023. This is Caesar Ibrahim, Group Manager of Residential at Liberty, while the guests today are three of the industry's leading mortgage brokers, whose brokerages have been recognized in this year's Fast Brokerages report for their exceptional growth and innovation. We have Shubham Bhaskar, Director at Sheel Capital, Jonathan Mosslar, Managing Director at Marquette Financial, and Nathan Smith, Director at Birdie Wealth. Welcome, Caesar.  

Caesar Ibrahim [00:00:55] Thanks, and thanks for having me, everyone.

Antony Field [00:00:57] Hi, Shubham. 

Shubham Bhaskar [00:00:59] Hi, Antony. Thanks for having me here. 

Antony Field [00:01:01] Thank you. Welcome, Jonathan.  

Jonathan Mosslar [00:01:03] Thanks, Antony.  

Antony Field [00:01:05] Thanks for joining us, Nathan.  

Antony Field [00:01:07] It's great to have everyone here today for this virtual roundtable. So achieving 20% growth in one year is no mean feat, especially in the current economic environment. But that's what all of these brokerages who join us today have achieved even more impressive. Shubham and Jonathan have been in business for less than three years, and have earned the additional honor of being crowned fast starters. And now Fast Brokerages for 2023. So I thought I'd start off by asking everyone what your strategy are. Sorry, what your strategies are as a as a brokerage that you use to achieve fast growth and why they've been so effective. Maybe I Shubham we could start with yourself. 

Nathan Smith [00:01:07] Thanks, Antony. 

Shubham Bhaskar [00:01:50] Yeah, so look, Thanks, Antony for asking that question. The strategies around how we have been achieving the growth has been purely demystification. So we've really tried and married to the fact that we can't just be the residential homelands brokerage, we need to be able to offer more products to our customers diverse range of products, which will basically be commercial loans, probably as well as property development as well. And at the same time offer asset finance and car loans etc. So within our portfolio, we've got customers that are there's a range from loan amounts for $400,000 to around $21 million. And in that range, we were able to offer all support and support and services to our customers, which include home loans, investment loans, investment loans to second tier and third tier lenders, commercial loans with major lender, second tier lenders, and third tier lenders. And at the same time, property development as well, with the businesses that we help, we're also able to pick up a couple of asset finance deals here and there, and also help them with sort of car loan, car finance deals, that's only when they ask sort of, you know, coming to us and asking us for those kinds of products. We don't market ourselves for acid finance type products, but having all the products under the same umbrella gives us the ability to be able to offer services to our customers, but at the same time, also create good revenue streams for our business. 

Antony Field [00:03:22] That's fantastic. So quite a diverse range that you offer there. What about yourself, Jonathan, how have you achieved what sort of strategies have you used to achieve fast growth? Why have they been effective?  

Jonathan Mosslar [00:03:34] Well for me, Antony. It's been looking internally at the team sort of as I've started hiring people through last year as the first year in business, we started off with really high expectations. So meaning that the couple that we did hire that were new to industry, they had no idea what good or bad or great was. So we set the expectation that okay, we've got a certain amount of lodgements and settlements we do each month, that's our baseline, rather than letting him sort of slowly grow in and get bad habits from there. The other thing is essentially looking at which part of the market we're going to service. So as we've gone through this rate rising sort of cycle, as you guys have probably all noticed is first time buyers are nowhere in the market at the moment, it's very difficult. So we've sort of angled our business and where we're trying to find clientele more towards the higher end of the market, with investors and self employed clients. So we've really done a lot of marketing and pushing out to our referral partners to try and service that part of the market just as the markets changed to push towards those clients.  

Antony Field [00:04:37] Okay, great. Thanks for that. Jonathan. What about yourself, Nathan? How's Birdie Wealth been able to drive its growth so quickly?  

Nathan Smith [00:04:44] You know, Birdie's been in business for six years now. We grew in 2023 because we grew our brokerage team and the brokers within it. So we went from three mortgage brokers up to seven mortgage brokers and three of them actually approached us, they came to us and said, This is a brand we want to work for. And this is where we want to want to spend our Monday to Friday. So a lot of our marketing wasn't just targeted at clients, it was actually targeted showing the culture and and the people behind the business. And from a broking perspective, they felt like that was the place that they would feel psychologically safe to turn up every day. And it also meant that it was a business whereby they could focus on sitting down and writing loans and have a processing and marketing engine built in behind them to manage that part of the business for them. 

Antony Field [00:05:34] Okay, correct. Thanks for that Nathan. And I'm just interested to get your viewpoint here, Caesar dealing with brokerages, obviously, on a frequent basis, what are some of the, from what you've heard from the brokerages here today? What's your experience?  

Caesar Ibrahim [00:05:54] First of all, we probably all just heard that 71% of Australians have used brokers last month most recent data, which is just awesome. And you can hear in this conversation, why? Now why wouldn't you use a broker, you've got very talented and purposeful people in our industry. So just really bored of what I'm hearing today. In terms of on liberty as a lender side with, we've tried to keep it simple. We know brokers and customs have plenty to worry about at the moment. So we keep it simple with consistent communication with our brokers direct access to our BDM team, which all here could probably attest to, as well as our credit decision makers and settlement officers, I think that sets us apart. Now that sounds pretty simple. It is a simple approach, but not always easy to execute. So this would not happen without of course, the culture in Liberty, that we believe in our purpose and want to help the broken network. And hopefully, all of you here have experienced that firsthand. So really, we want to keep it easy, Speedy, keep the human interaction keep free thinking base every decision on its merits and on the loans merits. And really, can you go wrong when your customer first? I don't think so.  

Antony Field [00:07:15] Thanks for that. So you saw from what the brokers have said today with the different strategies that have obviously diversification, really focusing on supporting the brokers, investor market? Are these quite common strategies? What are you sort of hearing from the brokerage as you deal with in terms of the growth?  

Caesar Ibrahim [00:07:34] Definitely a theme that sort of started sort of at the end of during COVID. And coming out is the diversification piece. So we heard that earlier. So really branching out outside of residential. And really, we're trying to support the broker network, if we can be some little sorts of education piece and make things easy for brokers and their support staff and the customers. That's what we're seeing a bit more of so investors, self employed with low dock lending. So a vital part of our economy, obviously, in small business, everyone here is a small business owner, we really take the time to understand each unique circumstance and try to get to a yes, really, is how we try to support our broken network.  

Antony Field [00:08:21] Yeah, great. Thank you very much for that. So sort of, I guess, moving on, from what we've been talking about, talking about growth, how do you sustain that in a really competitive lending market? You know, we've still got rising interest rates, inflation, etc. I'm interested to hear from the panel, how you how you really keep that growth going. So whoever wants to answer that one,  

Shubham Bhaskar [00:08:47] I'm happy to go first, it will be follow the same sort of pattern, make it easier. So I think with our company, we're sort of tackled that in two ways, one, obviously in house to make sure that we're actually we're actually doing the right thing within our business with the with rising inflation. So we actually run cars and processes actually, very frequently. We've done that very recently. And we want to make sure that we're not doing anything in our business that's causing leakages in the process or double handling in that in our process. Was that sort of given us a good idea about is efficiency. So our focus is mainly just upon how quickly can we actually go yes, for our customers. So that's, that's, that's been helping us quite significantly. So that's our internal internals are a wave and in that we are channeling to be able to combat this current market. The other one is customer obsession. It's really, it's been really, really important to be as close to our customers as began, especially in this market. The customers are feeling the ones that are coming out of 2.2 1.98% interest rates going into 5.7 or 6% interest rates, they're really feeling it. So it's been really important for us to really make sure that we have a good strategy around calling them Making sure that they're doing okay, making sure wherever we can do the right revision or wherever we can find a better way to, you know, reduce their repayments to provide that solution to them, or sort of, you know, sort of structure their finances in such a way that they're not feeling the pinch as hard as the others. So that's, that's something that we have been doing any resources that we find that around budgeting or that around, helping them in managing their finances better, we share that with our customers. And that's, and that's what they've been really sort of, you know, happy about, and they're really doing that our services from Sheel Capital. 

Antony Field [00:10:38] Okay, great. Thanks for that Shubham. Jonathan, What are your thoughts on that? That whole piece about sustaining the growth?  

Jonathan Mosslar [00:10:44] Yeah, well, similar to Shubham, and we've sort of been ensuring we don't have any leakage in the business. So we kind of get together every three months or so once a quarter as a whole team and look at our workflow and go, you know, what's working, what's not working, what we improve, those sessions usually go for about two or three hours. When we do that as a team, then it's usually hard to put that time aside, but it's definitely worthwhile, and just improving our workflow and improving that speed to Yes, from customer inquiry, as well as sort of transforming ourselves into trusted advisors in a way. In the current market, people have never had more questions, and not even just customers, you know, real estate agents, accountants, etc. We've never had more questions from those sort of professional partners that we've worked with. So part of what I've been doing is essentially, every Sunday afternoon, I send out a bit of a quick email to most of our real estate agents that we work with just to give them a bit of an idea of what's going on in rates the market, I'll share a few articles with them to help them improve their business. Because then if we can become that sort of trusted advisor, if they've got customers that are just confused, they know that we're not going to add to that confusion, we're going to help sort of add a bit of peace of mind and the whole process, as well as for the customers, we've tried to surround ourselves with professional partners that we can refer them off to, for that financial advice piece. Obviously, as brokers we can't give proper financial advice, we can only sort of push them in the right direction. So one thing I've worked really hard on over the last sort of 18 to 24 months is to have a terrific support network for our customers and go, Okay, you're confused, rates are going up, you're struggling with money, which is what you've been telling me go have a chat to this guy or girl who can help me with that advice. And even though they may or may not be a customer right now, for me, we found that they would usually come back after six to 12 months, just because they trusted us as an advisor of some sort. 

Antony Field [00:12:39] Great, so that obviously, working with you closely with customers or referral partners as well, what's your experience, Nathan in terms of that, I guess, sustaining the growth, including customer retention and new clients?  

Nathan Smith [00:12:57] I think the messaging is similar to what the others have said. And Jonathan said that they will you need to become that trusted adviser. So as rates moving up, Are they contacting their accountant, their financial planner? Or Are they contacting their broker? So you want to be that prime point of contact to the one they're going to ask questions. A lot of our time this year has been spent, I don't know if you'd call it reassuring or, or acting as a counselor in some circumstances to clients. Giving really simple financial tips that we often take for granted that not everyone is aware of, is what we've been doing. And doing that one on one on the phone with our clients and reassuring them of their position and helping them with those budgets. From a marketing perspective as well. We've been moving more into those pain points that the clients are feeling so changing and adapting our socials, their marketing message to what the clients are feeling, what are their pain points at the moment? What's what are their needs, and what are they looking for and making sure that our message is reflective of that.  

Antony Field [00:14:06] Caesar just curious to know, listening to what you've heard from the brokers about sustaining growth. Any tips that you might have for brokerages? 

Caesar Ibrahim [00:14:17] Can be difficult giving tips to such a strong group. But we've heard that word trust get thrown around. By all I think trust is one of those things that is very hard to get but very easy to lose and even harder to regain once lost. So really keeping close to your customer practicing empathy, and really, I know we're speaking about fast growth, but there's nothing fast about relationships. So really going slow to go fast. Understanding customers not pushing them into things have their best interest at heart. Really, everyone's hit the nail on the head there in terms of trust and consistency.  

Antony Field [00:14:59] Right. Thank you. Thank you for that. So I think I'm going to come to Jonathan, first of all this time, because the next question we touched on before, we're talking about what particular customer sectors are performing well. You mentioned that first time buyers is struggling at the moment, but I think investor, investor markets doing quite well. So just curious to hear from yourself and the others on what sectors are doing well? 

Jonathan Mosslar [00:15:22] It definitely will, as I think I mentioned earlier, property investors is a pretty large part of sort of our portfolio of clients, as well as self employed. So we concentrate pretty heavily on self employed. And that's probably what has helped us grow so quickly over the last 18 months. A lot of those business owners simply for the sort of first half of 2020, sort of held sat on their hands and didn't purchase things just because no one knew whether the world was going to end through COVID or not. And a lot of those guys now and they've got tax returns that reflect where the business truly is. So they spent the last two years in hibernation, and they've started coming out using those good tax returns to actually go out and borrow some money. So that's why we've really concentrated on that side of the market while rates are high. As rates sort of come back down over the next couple of years, we probably will push more towards first time buyers just as they come back into the market. But for now, it's definitely especially here in the ACT in Canberra, we're seeing investors and self employed as the sort of two strongest sectors of the market in regards to how easily they can borrow money and how willing are they to go out and purchase property at the moment. 

Antony Field [00:16:30] Okay, great. Nathan and Shubham, interested to hear what sectors you think you're doing well for you? 

Nathan Smith [00:16:36] We target specifically by geography in the area around where our offices so we predominately deal with residential mums and dads PAYG type clients were found that the first homebuyers actually performed pretty well in the area that we're in, it seems the investors who, and are kept up on borrowing capacity that can no longer even borrow what they could two years ago, the ones that are kind of stuck in or unable to continue to borrow the first homebuyers while they can't purchase at the same price, they could, at the start of the year, still have the ability to head out and borrow. The other segment, which we see is doing well is those with slightly older children, that they're into primary school, now they're out of childcare so that parents have almost had a pay rise. They're both parents and back to work. They've had plenty of equity in the past couple of years, and they're in a position to look to borrow. So their financial position is becoming a little bit more sophisticated, they're getting advice from planners, and they're heading out to either invest in shares or continue to purchase property. 

Shubham Bhaskar [00:17:46] I guess for myself, Antony, I'd say probably investors is probably what I'm seeing the most at the moment in my in my transactions. And the reason being these probably investors, and this is really sort of to a call out to all of them, because they they're quite savvy. And they knew that the market during COVID times, even though the serviceability was slightly better, with the with the low interest rates with the market was quite inflated, and they knew that the property prices were you know that 25 30% On a high. And that's why they actually didn't buy at that time that a lot of them actually ended up selling at that time. And what they've done is now that the market is correcting itself in terms of the property prices that come back into the market, and they're actually now started buying quite aggressively. So that's one segment of my of my business that's sort of doing well at the moment. The other one that I actually quite see, the other one that I see quite frequently these days, also probably developers, and hobby developers that have got the, you know, the projects on the first and the second mortgages, they started the process when the when the market was quite good, when the interest rates were, you know that at that six and a half 7%. But now those interest rates are more like you know, 10 11%. And that's what's really sort of helping, that's not really that's not really helping them in terms of the total profit that they're going to make at the end of their project. And that's why they are now sort of seeking for some more help in figuring out which other lender they could sort of go out to, and see if they can merge their first and second together to be able to get a good a good average rate on the project. So they can actually make some money at the end of it. Because whatever is said and done, I think what's really hurting right now is the building industry because their prices have gone significantly high and you've got the costs of funds that are not really helping the builders at the moment. And if they don't look after those kinds of margins. A lot of these projects are now breaking even anymore. So, so that's the kind of that's the kind of stuff that I'm currently seeing. 

Antony Field [00:19:54] Okay, great. Thank you for that Shubham. I guess bring you in here Cesar, Shubham just mentioned property developers, investors with first time buyers, etc. Liberty as a non bank lender has quite a diverse product range. How do any of these fit into what you're seeing in the market at the moment? 

Caesar Ibrahim [00:20:13] Yeah, all of the above. So specifically invest is starting to come back into market, we are seeing activity from first time buyers, as mentioned, by Jonathan depending on region and government stimulus and support that they may receive. Also low-doc. So low-doc for small business, is really on a growing path now that people have sort of settled their business and got a normal, normal flow going. But as you probably all are aware, were at Liberty. It's not just residential, it's commercial, it's SMSF. It's assets, car, personal loans. So we're seeing sort of growth across all we seem to resonate a little more with the uncertain times at liberty with our free thinking approach. And, again, I've mentioned before assessing people on their own merit, and really looking into their unique circumstances to really get maximum borrowing capacity for these customers. And also, obvious. Refinance market is still relatively strong. So there's a bit of flow happening in the refinance space with brokers helping customers get the best deal possible. 

Antony Field [00:21:27] Alright, thanks for that. I think it shows the value of non-bank lender in this type of market. My next question is, we've already sort of touched on it, but I'd like to delve a bit deeper. We talked, we mentioned diversification before. I'm interested to hear from all of you how you approach and value diversification in the brokerage and, and what are the benefits? So Shubham I think you, you mentioned that when we first started, so you can think about for yourself? 

Shubham Bhaskar [00:21:59] Yeah, I think that's definitely our key position in the market, it can probably almost say it's a USP because, as is a previously mentioned, 71% of the residential mortgages are being written by mortgage brokers. But commercial lending is somewhere around that 30 to 40%, which is, which actually leaves the mortgage brokers a lot of room to sort of play in a bigger fields to play in. However, having said that, though, the conversion rates and commercial are not as good as residential, like, you know, one out of sort of three residential leads will convert, whereas the ratio in commercial is more like one in five, but one in seven, even sometimes, because the, the scenario sort of is very different for every business or for every commercial property investor, which is where banks like liberty and the true are really coming in. And they're really sort of give us a big lending hand to be able to assist and provide solution to our clients. But diversification in general is extremely important, because one thing that we also find in commercial landscape is the ticket items are actually much bigger. Which means that, you know, when you actually help a self employed person, you're not only just looking out for their commercial loans, you're also looking after residential loans, you're looking after their investment portfolio. At the same time, you're also looking at the asset finance side of things as well. And as, as cliche as that sounds, our country actually runs on small businesses, as well as this is really sort of pot like the lifeline of our business of our country and economy. So it only makes sense to be able to really invest a lot of interest and in this low energy to be able to figure out what is the best way to help these businesses. So helping the trading businesses helping the commercial property investors that are sitting on a lot of equity and also want to be able to now diversify their own investments, from residential to commercial property is a big thing to see in our market right now, especially with a lot of property buyers, agents that are coming in, into commercial for example, police, the property is doing great jobs, the police see we've got rethink investing, they're doing really good job as well. And sort of bringing them all together. They're providing a lot of education to the clients that align with clients. And now we're moving towards commercial property, which is creating a lot of work for us, which is creating substantial amount of good work that we can do and assist in, in providing services to these clients.  

Antony Field [00:24:26] Thanks Shubham. Nathan and Jonathan why don't you share your experiences diversification? 

Nathan Smith [00:24:33] We play predominantly in the residential space so our clientele are nurses, school teachers, firefighters, so our need for commercial lending and asset finance is limited because we get them so rarely we only partner with a broker who specializes in that space and understands it and does it daily. We're we've diversified into the needs of what our clients need. So we have conveyancing arm that sits Alongside the broking business, and that's been operating for three years. And this year, we've opened up property management, we've moved into that space as well. So those two arms are the ones that our clients need. All we're trying to do there is find ways to be in contact with our client more often, we just feel that those two services allow us to make those clients stickier, and continue to use us going forward. If they think of birdie, they think we've got the needs covered that our, that our clients want. 

Jonathan Mosslar [00:25:27] Yeah, and for me, I remember a similar story to Shubham in regards to sort of for the first 12 months running the business, we were pretty much wholly and solely residential property. Whereas throughout 2023, we've moved a little bit more into that commercial space, just be it through the needs of our customers, we just noticed a lot of our self employed customers were coming back to us and saying, you know, I want to buy new office space, for example, can you help me out, which, which sort of pushed us into service in that side of the clientele, as well as asset finance, so vehicle finance, with us, so with rates where they are, we were seeing a lot of a lot of people rather than just walking into a car dealership and getting offered, you know, 1.99% or 0% interest rate, those sort of fell away over the last 24 months. So there was a lot more opportunity for people to actually go out and start looking elsewhere for vehicle finance. So that really pushed us towards offering car finance, which has been a big part of our growth especially over the last six months. 

Antony Field [00:26:27] Great I'm interested to hear Caesar from remedies perspective on as you are wanting to respond business, the benefits for brokers to be diversifying both the client base and the types of loans they offer. 

Caesar Ibrahim [00:26:42] Everyone's pretty much hit the nail on the head in terms of being trying to be the one stop shop for your customer, you've, you've worked so hard to create that relationship to create that trust. You know, you'll know they'll want to use you and your services. So the more you diversify, you know, it's pretty, it's common sense that you'll get more business and there's nothing it's nothing like referral business I think you'd all sort of understand even our liberties in brokers referring Liberty, we know how special important that is to us. Same with same in broker land. So you know, you help one family realize their dreams or potentially save a deposit or even save having to sell at home. You know what that word of mouth referral sort of does. So if you can help one year with someone time than the next year with the purchase of a first car for their daughter, and the next year SMSF for their parents. How cool is that? Right? 

Antony Field [00:27:41] Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Caesar. Staying with you now. I think you touched on it a bit a little bit before but just wanted to get more of a sense from you about you know, that range of products and services that Liberty offer that can help brokers such as the guys that we're talking to today and other brokerages out there. 

Caesar Ibrahim [00:28:05] As you can see I'm running out of space in my background so diversification but you know, whether it's short term needs or long term strategies for businesses or individuals, and we're pretty well placed in providing that diversification for brokers and their customers. residential commercial business loans, asset finance, personal loans, even down to insurance. So really, you can sort of think liberty and you're spoilt for choice in terms of what we can what we can offer and on top of that, our willingness to really engage with the broker network on the phone with the with any assessor with any of our support team really puts you in good stead you know when you deal with us because we really purpose or really care about the customer that's why we're in this game, we don't we don't particularly want every day to be the same and have everyone been easy we just like to get that result for your customers because you know how special that can be. 

Antony Field [00:29:10] I'm sure all the brokers here are aware of Liberty and how non-bank lenders operate. But just for brokers out there who may not use non-bank lenders that much how do you how do you differ from mainstream banks in terms of the types of customers you service and the more flexible approach?  

Caesar Ibrahim [00:29:32] Yeah, I'm gonna be very careful because I don't I don't mean bash I don't competitor bash honestly. But everyone, everyone has their role. And I think what, what we're able to do in terms of our size, and really our business purpose is to actually try and try and try to get that positive outcome for the customer. So you know, our staff were in office first sort of building in business. That's because we want everyone to work together to try to get outcomes for each application that comes in. So everyone, we chaperone each application, they're all treated differently. And the expertise we have in house is, you know, from five years to 25 years experience not really giving you the answer in terms of non bank versus bank. But really, you know, I spoke about COVID Earlier, we don't need to broad brush things because of our size. An example is sorry to keep bringing up COVID. But in COVID, some larger institutions had too broad brush and say, Okay, no, no lending to retail, or an exam as an example. When you're smaller, you can actually talk to the team and say, we're not know, but let's ask these reasonable questions to try to get it to Yes. So I think that's the main difference in a smaller organization with less people, particularly more connected, and draw that same purpose of getting more people financial. 

Antony Field [00:31:04] Right, thank you for that. And just to wrap things up, final question for everyone is about where they think the market is heading in 2024, Nathan we'll start with you on your thoughts on that. 

Nathan Smith [00:31:19] Think the value of the broker will continue to grow. And then more people will turn to a broker we say that's that grow year on year, and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't grow in 2024. With that, though, seems is more responsibility, more paperwork that continues to fall on the shoulders of a broker. So I feel you'll see a lot more brokers partnering together and, and sharing resources to help to allow them to do what they do best, which is spend time in front of their customers and in front of their partners, as opposed to sitting in a computer and typing out forms. So in 2024, I see the the market share for brokers grow, and as well as the professional brokerage continue to grow, as opposed to the sole operator.  

Antony Field [00:32:08] Great. Thank you. Uh Jonathan?.  

Jonathan Mosslar [00:32:11] Yeah, similar, Nathan, I think that the broker sort of Proposition will grow throughout 2024. And probably what will drive that is, there's probably going to be a little bit more pain in the market for the first half of next year. And as it becomes more difficult to borrow money and more expensive that does, we sort of see that pushes clients towards the broker channel. So that will come with more compliance, as Nathan mentioned, hit the nail on the head with that, but I personally see it as a good thing. As we sort of push towards an industry of a more professional business based industry compared to sole operators, I think that's better for the market. In general, more training or experience is better client outcomes, essentially, and your fingers crossed, it's just ease sort of second half of next year regarding interest rates. So it's a bit more fun from there, because we all probably know it's been a bit of a rough last 12 months with some of the conversations about to have clients. So hoping for some more positive conversations through the second half of next year.  

Antony Field [00:33:09] So I think we definitely all. Shubham your thoughts? 

Shubham Bhaskar [00:33:13] I think similar to Nathan and, Jonathan, I think activity in the market is going to be immense, because a lot of these clients who are still on fixed rates are going to come out of fixed q1 of next year and flowing through the q2 as well. So they will be picking up the phones and figuring out what we need to do to be able to you know, sort of contain situation as much as they can. So the activity will 100% be here in 2024. In terms of the property prices, I think the economic sort of forecast is the property prices will probably you know, sort of reduce a little bit further, which is probably a good thing for the investors, which means the investor will be able to go out and do and play more in the investing market, which will which will also increase activity for us. So overall in 2024 Lester's hope to begin see one cut at least I wish all of us had a crystal ball and we were able to tell our customers Hey, guys, don't worry that rate cuts are coming next year, I think sees a good probably have more influence than us. But yeah, that's how do we actually see red cards and if the rates are going to increase, not too much of an increase in the in the global economic forum. I feel like the wars are obviously creating a bit of a bit of a ripple in the industry. And that's coming from, you know, the two wars that we have going currently, hopefully those wars sort of come to an end and or come to a situation where it doesn't affect the global economy and we can all see good effects of that. So my forecast for 2024 Probably pretty weak in terms of what I can forecast with what's going on around the world but I can only hope for some positivity to come out. 

Antony Field [00:34:58] Right. Thank you all. I guess we all wish we had a crystal ball and what's going to happen with breakouts, but Caesar, I'll let you wrap it up. What are your thoughts on what's going to happen next year? 

Caesar Ibrahim [00:35:09] I know brokers need a rest. Because I know the last five years have been pretty, pretty crazy busy. But my crystal ball tells me the activity will remain pretty strong in broker land, which is great. So it's great, it's a great place to live. Right? supply remains tight economy is proving to be very resilient. Hence the rate increases, we need to remember to historical versus historical rates were higher than the artificial 2%. We had it for a while, but we're sort of in line with averages. So it's just a matter of sort of getting used to it and riding through so there are many factors that to consider of course, but with property supply outstripping demand. I see I see upward pressure on property prices despite the rising credit costs, honestly, growth in migration, shrinking levels of available land. The drop in building approvals and a slower and more costly construction will just stoke upward pressure, I think on prices. My thoughts on a broker channel is a borrowers need brokers. It's very pleasing to say that 71% of Australia's are utilizing the services of a broker. And for me, that's a win for Australians and win for choice. 

Antony Field [00:36:22] Thanks very much for that Caesar. Look, I think it's been a fantastic discussion. I congratulate you all on being winners of Australian Broker's Fast Brokerages 2023. And thank you for joining our discussion today. I hope you've got a lot out of it and others in the brokerage industry will get a lot out of it as well. So thank you. Thank you all.