#1 AUSSIE AND #4 LENDI

Lendi Group had two brokerage brands make the Top 25 Brokerages ranking this year, with Aussie taking out the top spot and Lendi coming in at fourth place. We sit down with David Hyman, co-founder & chief executive of Lendi Group, to find out how they’ve built a broking group with such strong success.

What do you attribute Aussie and Lendi’s success to?

Our network of over 1,300 expert brokers around the country has been a big driver behind our success. Our brokers are the force behind our vision of creating a seamless experience for all Australians on their home ownership journey, evidenced by our product review score of 4.8 for Aussie and 4.6 for Lendi.

With all brokers on a single best-in-breed technology platform, we’ve delivered productivity outcomes above the industry average, seeing for example our Lendi home loan specialists performing at three to four times the industry average.

Lendi and Aussie are also leading national trusted brands in the market that have played a key role in our success, as has our overarching broker support model that has progressively delivered results for both brokers and customers.

What was the group’s biggest achievement in 2023?

Our proudest moment for 2023 was, despite market headwinds, successfully completing delivery of our number one objective of Platform Aussie Ready.

Having both the Aussie and Lendi brands on platform has resulted in not only higher productivity, but at the same time supported increased accuracy, broader access to the right products on market for our customers, faster time to lodgement, and overall a seamless lending experience for both brokers and customers.

This contributed to our success over the past 12 months at a time when new residential lending declined in both volume and value terms (-9 per cent from FY22 to FY23). We were still able to outperform both the market and competitors, growing our market share from 5.8 per cent in FY22 to 6.2 per cent in FY23.

What was the biggest change or initiative you made last year to help brokers support their customers this year?

Aussie Ready remains our number one initiative that has driven our success in 2023.

Throughout the year, we saw both customers and brokers navigate significant market challenges, characterised by a remarkably low housing supply, a decline in purchasing activity, and higher interest rates affecting borrowing capacity and placing affordability challenges on home owners.

We also saw tightening credit conditions and less competition, which for customers included the impacts of unsustainable pricing amid rate rises by way of cashback and discounts removed from market.

Our platform assisted brokers to navigate these market shifts, giving brokers timely access to our full lending suite on platform, in turn providing access to more tailored product options for their customers. Our training and a strong support model have also enhanced broker capability with a better ability to drive productivity, positioning our brokers to navigate these challenges, and achieve business growth.

What will be the group’s main points of focus for the next six months?

Over the next six months, we’re focused on being product-led, taking our fully supported broker model to market with new and enhanced products that can help our brokers capture more of the market and allow more customers better access to the competitive choice our expert broker network offers.

What’s your top tip for running a leading brokerage?

A combination of experienced brokers and continual investment and improvement in broker experience – inclusive of training and centralised support – is essential to a leading brokerage.

At the same time, it’s crucial to deliver a unique and superior customer experience, one that continues to have Australians choose your brand for their home ownership choices.

#2 MORTGAGE CHOICE

Coming in at second place is another major brokerage brand: Mortgage Choice. The franchise brokerage wears the crown in terms of loan volumes for the year, with its brokers having written the largest number of loans in FY23 of any Top 25 Brokerages: 53,612. We asked CEO Anthony Waldron what gives the group its success.

What do you attribute the brokerage’s success to?

Mortgage Choice’s successes in 2023 – and across the 30-plus years of our history – come down to our incredible network of brokers and the dedicated teams supporting them. This service ethos permeates every aspect of our business.

Despite the market challenges we saw last year, our broker network showed an unwavering commitment to supporting their clients. This often required tough conversations and additional support as we saw rate rises squeeze serviceability and reduce borrowing power. Yet I firmly believe that it’s in challenging times like these that the value mortgage brokers provide is more evident than ever.

What was the group’s biggest achievement in 2023?

It’s hard to pin our success on just one achievement – 2023 was a year where we saw great results on several fronts.

Our brand went from strength to strength and we saw fantastic growth in our lead volumes, in particular harnessing the power of our relationship with REA Group to increase the leads coming to our brokers from the realestate.com.au website. We also saw a substantial increase in the local leads generated by our brokers as a result of effective national-to-local marketing campaigns.

We made a big investment in our white-label panel, launching the Mortgage Choice Freedom suite of products and have seen fantastic uptake from our customers.

We saw a lot of interest from those wanting to join Mortgage Choice and an uplift in the quality of those candidates. As a result, we welcomed 170 new brokers to our network during the year, 42 per cent of them were women. It’s fantastic to see our efforts to introduce more diversity into the network delivering real-world results.

What was the biggest change or initiative you made last year to help brokers support their customers this year?

Without a doubt, it was the launch of Mortgage Choice Freedom – powered by Athena.

Rolled out nationally in June 2023, the Mortgage Choice Freedom product suite is a game changer for our broker network. In a year marked by rising interest rates and continued differentials between front- and back-book pricing, our brokers could offer fair-value home loan products designed to help clients pay off their mortgages faster and with the peace of mind that existing customers will always receive the same rate as new customers on a like-for-like variable loan. That’s something we’re especially proud of.

What will be the group’s main points of focus for the next six months?

A big area of focus in 2024 will be continuing to deepen the REA Group and Mortgage Choice offerings, providing consumers with a more seamless connection between property search and finance.

We’ll also continue to invest in the simplification and efficiency of our core broker systems, enabling our brokers to more effectively meet customer needs.

We will continue to build on the success of the Mortgage Choice Freedom offering and have some exciting things planned as we continue to drive innovation in the white label space.

In 2023, we continued to make positive steps in our work to improve diversity within the broking industry and we were honoured to receive the MFAA’s award for Diversity & Inclusion Program of the Year. However, there’s still a long way to go and Mortgage Choice will continue to play an active role in this space.

What’s your top tip for running a leading brokerage?

Care about your customers.

Our customers trust us with what’s often the biggest financial decision of their lives and it’s important we live up to that trust. Every day I see examples of our franchisees going above and beyond for their customers.

Focus on people. We invest heavily in our franchisees’ professional and personal development, so they have the skills to run effective businesses, be great leaders, and provide the best possible service and support to clients.

Build a great brand. You need a strong and trusted brand that stands out in the market. And of course, this brand needs to be backed by exceptional brokers doing exceptional work.

#3 LOAN MARKET

Rounding out the podium finishes is Loan Market (the brokers operating under the branded franchise offering of the Loan Market Group). The national director of the 30-year-old brokerage, Andrew Thompson, unpacks how it’s constantly evolving its broker offering.

What do you attribute Loan Market’s success to?

There are a number of reasons why Loan Market businesses grew in a challenging environment.

We provide productivity training that’s led by Kaizen and Lean Six Sigma principles. In doing so, we help businesses introduce efficiencies so they can process loans faster and reduce rewrites. These productivity gains are complemented by all the compliance and data-handling features of our award-winning MyCRM, saving our brokers time and enabling them to help more clients.

The most productive offices have powerhouse support teams.

Loan Market has been helping its business owners scale up with the right people in the right roles.

Through BrokerForce, our businesses can tap into our offshore data processing specialists who are highly trained in MyCRM and Loan Market’s CX-focused compliance practices. We have the BrokerForce Total model, whereby a specialist is assigned to a brokerage in a permanent role or the Lite model, which is an on-demand capacity with flexibility around processing tasks.

What was the brokerage’s biggest achievement in 2023?

Our NPS (Net Promoter Score) hit 98+ this year. That’s industry-leading and the best representation of Loan Market’s customer service proposition.

MyCRM – which was named CRM Platform of the Year at the Australian Broking Awards – takes the heavy lifting in compliance and lodgement off our brokers. With more time, Loan Market brokers can focus on building relationships with their clients and adding true value from the first meeting to settlement and beyond.

From word-of-mouth referrals to the tens of thousands of positive Google Reviews, our brokers have amassed, delivering the industry’s best customer experience has underpinned our brokers’ profitability.

When you enjoy a great relationship with your client, that opens up more opportunities. Over 2024, helping clients with more than their home loan will be critical and our brokers have built trust and respect from which they can start these discussions.

What was the biggest change or initiative you made last year to help brokers support their customers this year?

We’ve continued to support Loan Market brokers to build smarter businesses and diversify their revenue streams.

This year, Loan Market brokers attended LMG’s inaugural commercial and asset finance professional development days where they heard about MyCRM and Nodifi’s integration, allowing brokers to refer asset finance or write deals themselves through comprehensive and compliant solutions for clients; our referral hubs where brokers can refer to commercial and asset finance specialists while retaining the client relationship; CX improvements across consumer, commercial, and unsecured lending; and expansion of the asset finance lender panel and more. Since then, we’ve also added CLE to our tech stack.

Diversifying isn’t just about new revenues; it’s just as important in strengthening the client relationship.

As interest rates continued to soar, we also made it easier for our customers to access information and apply for hardship consideration from their lenders.

What will be the brokerage’s main points of focus for the next six months?

There’s uncertainty about what’s ahead over the next six months.

But we do know that leads will be a prized commodity and we’re going to be helping brokers generate and convert more digital leads with marketing programs and platforms that integrate with MyCRM, local area engagement, and more. We’re excited to take the brand’s visibility to new levels in 2024.

Loan Market brokers also have a huge advantage in our affiliation with Ray White, Australia’s largest real estate network. Brokers deliver great value to real estate agents, qualifying buyers before their offer is tabled to a seller. The average buyer’s borrowing capacity has taken a hit over the last 18 months, with property prices rising at the same time. Real estate agents will be turning to brokers for their expertise to better understand lending conditions for borrowers and bring sellers and buyers closer together.

We’re also further developing Brokerversity 2.0, the virtual campus that’s producing the support staff and brokers of tomorrow. We’re rolling out new accreditation courses and building out the content library from our experts.

What are your top tips for running a leading brokerage?

It’s about having the time and support to work on your business as much as you work in it.

It’s about finding the right people to help you review all your activities every month – from the number of leads you set out to generate, conversion of one-touch approvals, developing new referral partnerships, compliance, and everything in between that builds a business.

Running a brokerage can be lonely. It’s important to be part of a culture where you can collaborate with other like-minded business owners to grow together and lean on each other for support.

Find out what the leading brokerages are in Australia in The Adviser’s Top 25 Brokerages ranking, partnered by NAB here.

Tune in to hear more! Listen to the latest In Focus podcast to hear from NAB's executive, broker distribution, Adam Brown, as they discuss the key takeaways from this year's ranking.

[Related: The Top 25 Brokerages 2024: The dragons of industry]