Banker-turned-broker Jean Pierre-Gortan was the recipient of the Commercial Broker of the Year at the Australian Broking Awards 2023. Mr Gortan and his business partner Matthew Johnson made their mark as one of the top commercial brokerages in the country with their brokerage Simplicity Loans & Advisory having written $3 billion loans in just six years.
In this Q&A, we find out how Mr Gortan entered the broking industry, why he and his business partner chose to specialise in commercial finance, some career highlights and his top tips for budding brokers.
Here’s what he had to say:
When and how did you get into the broking industry?
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I’m coming up on about 25 years in the industry now. My original role was commercial banking with NAB, I spent about eight years there doing various roles before I did a short stint at GE Capital.
Around 2011, a friend of mine from NAB left and started his own brokerage mainly with a background in residential broking. He told me that he’s getting a lot of commercial leads and asked if I wanted to do some contracted work a couple of days a week.
Well, those couple of days became up to six days a week because there was that much volume, before I knew it, I’d spent about six years in the business.
Then around 2016, my business partner Matt Johnson and I kind of just decided to grab the goldfish and start our own business, which became Simplicity, and we opened our doors in August 2017.
Why commercial finance?
It’s always been a passion of mine. To be honest, when I was at uni, I didn’t really think that I wanted to be a banker or I wanted to do commercial finance or anything of the sort. I just fell into it.
I got offered a graduate program and I really enjoyed it. I like the complexity associated with commercial financing and it all just felt natural.
When we opened Simplicity, we actually decided we were going to do everything from home loans, to leasing, to commercial. But we weren’t good at anything other than commercial financing.
We worked it out pretty quickly that it was probably 20–30 per cent of our volume, but we’d spend 70 per cent of our time trying to manage the risks associated with home loans, like compliance.
We eventually decided we’d just cut it from our business entirely and focus on what we’re good at.
How do you manage such a large team across Australia?
It’s not easy. The biggest challenge that we’ve had since COVID-19 is everyone being so dispersed. One of the ramifications of having two offices in Sydney is that it has spread the team out significantly.
You lose a bit of that collaborative nature where you can chat about things and workshop deals. The Melbourne office is probably a slightly more difficult challenge because it’s probably too small to grow its own culture, there’s only about four people down there.
What we find is either Matt, my colleague Ryan or myself are going down there around fortnightly and spending at least two or three days down there.
We’re definitely still scratching our heads about it all the time, so I’d love for someone to share their secrets with us! It’s a work in progress.
What are some of your career highlights?
I would say the business Matt and I have built over the last five to six years has been a crowning achievement in and of itself. The tech we’re building is kind of the next iteration of where the business is heading, but I like having achieved so much in such a short amount of time.
And that’s based off understanding how the industry works and how difficult it is to get any sort of momentum.
We’re writing $1–$1.5 billion a year in the business with only about eight brokers, which for us is a testament to the lead gen model we’ve got, the process we’ve put in place and the training we give our staff. I think that’s the one thing I can say in my career that I’m most proud of.
What are your top tips for brokers looking to break into commercial finance?
It’s all about starting somewhere, the more you get exposed to commercial financing, the better you’ll be.
In my career, I’ve probably seen around 25,000 deals. When I look at a transaction, I remember a deal I wrote that looked like it in 2017 and draw from my past experiences.
Someone just getting into commercial financing won’t yet have that skill, they don’t yet have a pool of knowledge to draw from and I think mentoring is a key part of developing that. Find someone in the industry that understands what they’re doing and learn from it.
I, myself, am still learning. Every day I learn something.
If you’d like to find out more about Jean Pierre-Gorton and Simplicity Loans & Advisory, tune in to the Elite Broker episode, How the Commercial Broker of the Year 2023 built his business, below:
