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Grant Rheuben of Loan Market in Victoria speaks to The Adviser coming off his big win at the Australian Broking Awards, being named Broker of the Year 2022.
As the highest-scoring individual winner at the ABAs, he also took home the Commercial Broker of the Year award 2022.
We catch up with this leading broker to find out his story, how he’s managed to write such a high volume of loans, and his top tips for other brokers.
What types of loans are you writing and what is your brokerage like?
I’m a sole broker business with four staff members. I’ve got three based in Melbourne and I also use the services of a support staff out of the Philippines.
We’re writing about $180 million of loans, split between commercial and residential, and we look after everyone from first home buyers to developers.
We assist clients all over Australia and have been doing so for 18 years. A majority of our clients would probably be professionals and business owners looking to create wealth through borrowing, buying properties and businesses, etc.
Why did you become a broker?
Originally at a university, I became a qualified accountant and I worked for nine years in the accounting field. I discovered through doing accounting day-to-day that I was doing everything reactively.
I saw an opportunity to move into banking where I felt I could work proactively with clients and help them use finance to generate wealth and buy property, so that’s when I started working for NAB.
Eventually I met Glen Spratt from Mortgageport and he taught me how to sell and how to use my skills. I spent four years doing that, which led me to Melbourne and started my business as a broker 18 years ago.
How did you find your first clients and how do you do that now?
When I first came to Melbourne about 20 years ago, I knocked on the doors of accountants. I felt if I was an accountant, they’d want to do business with me and I could establish a relationship that way.
My referral sources are across accountants, wealth advisers, insurance advisers, buyer’s advocates, and real estate agents. I’ve built up that base of referral partners over 18 years, but they’re the major source of my work today.
You’ve recently hit the milestone of settling a billion dollars in loans, how long did that take?
It took about 16 years. That 1 billion measurement was based on my time at the Loan Market Group. The first few years I started off, I was writing $20 and $30 million a year, although the loan sizes were a lot smaller and over time, I’ve just grown my business and built on what I did the year before.
What’s the average number of loans you might write over a year?
As a brokerage business, we’re a combination of residential and commercial lending, looking after the first home buyer to the large developer.
In the last financial year, we wrote $180 million worth of loans and the average loan size would be about a million dollars, so around 180 loans per year.
Do you have top tips for anyone building up their broking business?
I would advise them to set a goal of what they want and that goal could be as small as $30 million or it could be as big as $80 million. It doesn’t matter, but it’s then running your business on that outcome.
You have to look at the activity day in, day out, for example, prospect calls, how many people you’re seeing and make yourself accountable, and eventually that outcome of $30 million or $80 million will come.
Secondly, there are a lot of brokers who are part-time or considering what they want to do. I think you’ve got to accept the responsibility of running a business. You’ve got to stand up and be a business owner and be tough on yourself. That means working the hours to achieve results.
If you’re lacking a skill, go and learn that skill. If you don’t know how to read financial statements, go and learn how to read them. I’m still learning new things after 20 years.
You can find out more about Grant Rheuben and his business in The Adviser’s Billion Dollar Broker Podcast.
Tune in to the episode Billion Dollar Broker: Australia’s Broker of the Year 2022 on his secrets to success to find out more.
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