Broker group confirms partnership plans

“Twenty per cent of our business comes out of Ray White,” he said.

“They’re a really important partner, but increasingly what we’re seeing is the IP we develop or the instincts or the processes and systems we have that work with Ray White are becoming readily transferable to other real estate groups and other real estate relationships."

Mr White explained that the referral relationships Loan Market brokers develop with agents on a personal level work in the group’s favour when agents join a new company.

“Mainly through the fluidity of real estate people transferring from one agency to another, we have relationships that get transferred and that opens up new ways for us to deal with other real estate groups outside of Ray White,” he said, adding that Loan Market will look to grow new referral relationships throughout the New Year.

“The stuff that we’ve developed for Ray White we’re now saying that we can repurpose that for other referral relationships,” he said.

“Ray White has been a fundamental focus but we’ve also seen more and more spread to other real estate groups.

“We now deal with a lot of other brands in the real estate industry, mostly at a local level, and we see that very much continuing.”

However, Mr White noted that Loan Market’s extended referral relationships will not be limited to real estate agents.

“We have a significant number of brokers who deal with accountants and some actually are accounting practices who own a Loan Market franchise and they actually have staff they employ as loan writers, so our business is not limited to real estate referrals,” he said.

“It’s obviously where we create a lot of our DNA around referral processes but we found that some of the systems we developed for working inside a real estate group also work within an accounting group or a planning group.”

Mr White added that it’s important to make the referral relationships an easy sell for brokers.

“We do want to keep expanding those relationships and I think the fundamental DNA is around providing good flexibility for brokers in our agreement: no hand cuffs, no tertiary, no restraints and full ownership of trail,” he said.

“The second thing then is the system and process to help the referring process work better and that’s come out of the work we started with Ray White but are now expanding beyond Ray White.”

[Related: Real estate agent credits broker for listing success]