Counter broker ‘loneliness’ with ‘camaraderie’, IFBF says

Speaking at the IFBF’s first 2023 broker meeting, steering committee member Stephen Dinte outlined that many attendees came to network and hear from companies offering services such as loans without clawbacks, or credit fixing so some broker clients are better placed to get loans.

However, there was a huge social and wellness benefit, too.

“One of our main focus areas is education,” Mr Dinte said.

“We’re trying to educate brokers into looking outside of the square and finding out about all the other services that are available to them that can help them make money, rather than just focusing solely on residential or commercial mortgages.”

Yet because broking “can be lonely”, the camaraderie and social aspects of the networking were equally, if not more so, important, he outlined.

Referring to both the origins of the forum — where a pair decided to meet at a pub regularly to discuss their broker challenges and achievements — and the increasing forum members to date, Mr Dinte commented: “We've come back after COVID last year, and we've slowly every month had a couple more, a couple more, a couple more [brokers],” he explained.

“We've started [this year] our first meeting and we've got a really good rollout, so we expect this is going to just increase month on month.

During the COVID period, he said that many then  started working from home by themselves, being a mortgage broker.

“And it’s lonely,” he appraised.

When The Adviser asked if brokers relay that sense of loneliness to the IFBF, citing that was the reason they felt a need to attend an event, Mr Dinte replied: “Yes, it's the camaraderie that we have here.”

“A lot of these guys have been members for 10 years or more. They come every month and a lot of it is ‘I just like getting together with somebody’, shake hands and meet with them,” he said.

A lonely experience if self employed

Highlighting the value of such gatherings in terms of broker education, information and the peer-to-peer social aspect, Oasis Insurance ‘magic maker’ Trish Taylor vouched for the benefits.

“It’s at least 10-15 years since I’ve been coming here and the magic of this place is that these people are all volunteers,” she said.

“They give of themselves to the broker community and it's all about brokers helping each other.

“Being a mortgage broker is a very lonely existence, if you're a small self-employed [broker], and people can come here and they can share experiences good and bad with other like-minded people and learn from each other.

“It's all about supporting each other,” Ms Taylor affirmed.

The ex-aggregator business development manager (BDM) explained that during her experience she had talked to a lot of brokers and that “they’d all say ‘it gets so lonely’,” she recounted.

“And so I'd take their names, and every month when the [IFBF] agenda came out, I'd send it off to them and get them to come along here so that they could then form their own networks.

“It's about it's about brokers helping brokers,” she stated.

Loving the different angles of thought

Notably, Ms Taylor described how there was a lot of the legislation changes that came in many years ago, and “everyone was confused”.

“You could come here and they’d get to the nuts and bolts in what they were talking about.”

Ms Taylor added that she’d thus go to all the lender events that talked about it [regulation/law changes] and “you'd come away scratching your head”, but that at the IFBF events they actually ‘drill down’ into what it actually means on a day-to-day basis.

In this ‘friendlier’ environment of the forum, Mr Taylor added that: “If someone comes here, and they’ve come across a [broker] situation and they don't really know what to do, they've got so many resources here [at IFBF] who would have come across it themselves, that they can call on - without having to maybe call a lawyer or pay for an accountant,” she explained.

“I just love the angles of it. It's just amazing. And they just give up their own time,” she said.

According to the organisation, the not-for-profit (NFP) IFBF incorporated group is “supported by some of Sydney’s most successful finance professionals”, who “generously contribute their time and resources to promote networking, and knowledge sharing, and offer the necessary tools to empower mortgage brokers for business growth.”

[Related: Customers will ‘appreciate’ brokers more post-royal commission]