Brokers in ‘unique position’ to benefit from fintech: CEOs

FundX founder and CEO David Jackson believes the additional value brokers can offer clients via fintech products and services, combined with the reliance many fintechs have on brokers as an important avenue for growth via referrals, means those who leverage this relationship instead of resisting it may be poised to benefit most from the fintech revolution.

“At its core, finance broking is based on deep personal relationships developed over years of providing trusted and personalised information and advice,” Mr Jackson said.

“The business models of many fintechs, on the other hand, rely on rapid and inexpensive scaling of sophisticated tech offerings — except their founders often don’t possess the extensive customer base many brokers possess,” he said.

“What this means is that savvy brokers could consider forming commercially lucrative partnerships with fintechs in order to access value-adds for their customers, such as real-time indicative loan rate quotes, productivity tools, predictive analytics, neural networks and fast-learning algorithms, to name just a few.”

In an increasingly crowded third-party channel market, Mr Jackson believes partnering with fintechs will position brokers as innovative, forward thinking, and best-of-breed, strongly assisting in acquiring and retaining customers through improved customer experience and choice.

“In return, fintechs will benefit from the exposure to the brokers’ network of customers — making the two quite a natural fit,” he said.

Peter White of the FBAA also urges brokers to begin adapting to the new opportunities in financial services sooner rather than later.

“In the coming generations, we will see a fundamental and permanent shift away from the way we do lending today,” Mr White said.

“At the moment the impact is minimal, but this is likely to change very quickly, meaning brokers will need to adapt and move with the times, or risk being left in the wake of other more progressive players.”

Mr White believes there are “definite opportunities to be had” by working with these fintech innovators in the areas of lead generation, faster processing and settlement timeframes.

“My advice to brokers who don’t wish to be left behind is to move with the times and innovate, ensure your technology is leading edge, get good advice in this field, and be ready to push the boundaries,” he said. “Innovation will absolutely be key.”

[Related: FBAA chief 'concerned' about new mortgage platforms]