Breaking into the industry to build his own business, principal and director of Mortgage Advice Bureau Sydney, Mark Kevin, has developed a booming brokerage in just a few short years.
We caught up with the Sydney-based broker to find out how he got into the broking industry, the kinds of clients he targeted during the start of his broking journey, his team-building process, and why he’d like to see improved education standards for SMSF lending.
How and why did you become a broker?
This content is available exclusively to
The Adviser premium members.
I didn’t join the industry to become a mortgage broker per se, I had a different mindset going in and I joined with the intention of building a mortgage broking business.
So basically, when I started, I had to learn the craft and I was doing everything from finding and meeting clients right through to processing the loan via the systems and then working out what all the pain points were along the way.
I joined the industry with an intent to build a business and scale it rapidly and I’m targeting getting into the Top 25 Brokerages space over time!
What sort of clients were you looking for at the beginning?
When I first started out, I had a pretty strong Rolodex from my corporate career, which I was able to tap into.
I was very lucky to have that and to put the wheels in motion with a lot of financial planners and accountants in my network who were really happy to work with me before I’d even started.
Some had really mixed experiences with brokers, I’d often hear things like “they got too busy” or that they just weren’t good for them anymore, so I was able to hit the ground running with a lot of financial planners and accountants, and that helped generate a really high quality of clientele.
The referrals I got along with being at Mortgage Advice Bureau, I was introduced to national scale partners that had already developed and continued to develop national builders.
What is Decipher Expert?
When I started my journey into coaching I was introduced to BrokerEngine and Decipher Expert was born out of the systems, processes, and the intellectual property that was built around BrokerEngine.
My team and I spent hundreds of hours building this system out to the point where we had this blueprint built within BrokerEngine that would make templates, save sales scripts, outbound call scripts, and all these extras in their custom doc stacks.
BrokerEngine is a good "out of the box" product, but it wasn't the right fit for my business. So, after investing the hours building out the BrokerEngine blueprint, I've now got something that provides a structure and process to my team, and new brokers can quickly learn the system with minimal training.
How do you hire your team members/new brokers?
We use a local business in North Sydney called ProForce, [which is] attracting graduates to their recruitment system.
Basically, they take a brief off a business like mine, and I say I’m looking for graduates coming out of a finance, business, or even a law degree that are looking to develop a career in financial services.
And then they’re able to short-list them and bring them into our business and we find the right one.
Three of our guys so far have come through that and they’re amazing, bright young men who are university educated and qualified with a diploma.
They’re coming through as that next generation of [brokers] who have learnt compliance, BID [best interest duty], systems, and client service. It’s been super successful and we’ll continue to use that program.
You've been advocating for higher education standards in SMSF loan writing. Why is this important to you?
I think the barrier to entry is way too low. You could have someone from an unrelated discipline could go and do their Cert IV in a very short period of time and suddenly they’re a qualified broker that can start writing $1 million-plus loans.
Then they can approach their aggregator and do very light-touch accreditation and they can be writing and advising clients on credit decisions within the superannuation environment.
That’s a risk to the superannuation industry and their clients [who] are engaging with these brokers who don’t have the educational experience behind them. The consequences of getting it wrong can result in lost deposits.
So, what I’d like to see in the industry, in particular with regards to SMSF, is for there to be a self-managed super funds professionals association and for those professionals who have done the extra SMSF accreditation to get a specialist SMSF designation.
If you’d like to find out more about Mark Kevin and Mortgage Advice Bureau Sydney, tune in to the Elite Broker episode How Mark Kevin is building a profitable, scalable brokerage below:
