Christian Stevens and Chris Bates launch new brokerage

The business offers residential, asset, commercial, business, development, and private banking services and also assists expats working abroad in HK, Singapore, UAE, the UK, and the US in securing finance.

Flint – named to reflect the brokerage’s ambition to “spark a new era in mortgage broking” and “ignite change” – is headquartered in Sydney, but will have staff in Melbourne, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Canberra, and regional areas. It also has offshore support teams in the Philippines, Serbia, and Nepal.

In total, it has 19 founding brokers and 30 support staff split into four divisions: customer service, credit analysis, back-office support, and post-settlement care.

Aside from Mr Stevens and Mr Bates, other senior members include:

• Alex Pagonis - Flint senior broker and head of digital. He has over eight years of previous experience at KPMG in devising customer, product, and digital strategies to drive business growth.
• Adam Mastrosa - Flint senior broker and head of real estate. Prior to joining Flint, Mr Mastrosa had 15 years in executive sales and accounting experience and has also built a large property portfolio of his own.
• Craig Bigelow - Flint head of advice partnerships. A former financial planner who works closely with top-performing financial planners to build out service integration strategies.
• Salvador Huetos - Flint senior broker and head of UHNW/family office, leading the private banking service. Prior to joining Flint, he was a private banker for 14 years and has spent the last three years running the wealth division of the Lending Association.
• Alicia Van Der Pluym - Flint head of customer experience. Ms Van Der Pluym leads a team focusing on onboarding clients who are the right fit, providing personalised service and client experience innovation.
• Ben Sum - Flint chief operating officer and director. The Blusk broker will now ensure the support and strategists team of over 30 is running efficiently.
• Jon Sum - Flint head of advice and director will head up the strategy team.
• Ariane Rose - Flint head credit analyst. The VA Platinum employee will lead the credit analysts.
• Tisha Pradham - Flint head of strategy support team will lead the offshore teams alongside Ms Rose.

The Shore Financial broker (and Best Residential Broker NSW/ACT 2024) and the Blusk broker (and Australia’s Broker of the Year 2023) reportedly started talking more than five years ago to share ideas and help each other grow in their respective companies.

However, the duo told The Adviser that they decided to launch a new business together six months ago.

The two founders said: “We are big believers that collaboration happens at the top and competition at the bottom, and the conversation naturally moved to let’s do this together rather than as a running partner...

“While we could have continued to build growing boutique brokerages, we are going all in on the power of scale and creating a brand that changes the game of what we believed a large brokerage was in the past. Many hands make light work; combined, we don’t set any ceiling on what we know is possible.”

The brokerage heads said they plan to double the headcount in the next 12 months and plans to have the entire team up and running by 1 July (the start of the financial year 2025).

The founders said: “We have a national presence but believe Australians no longer want to use the broker down the road; they want a trusted advice partner and are okay with where that broker lives.

“We are becoming a profession rather than a transactional industry.”

Rather than specialising in one type of finance, Flint aims to have “a team of experts who will be the best in the industry at each niche”. The business will also have financial planning, real estate, accountancy, SMSF, and construction offerings.

“We are big believers in educating our customers and strategic partners and will provide industry-leading, data-driven content to our clients to help them build wealth through property,” they said.

The brokerage’s first priorities will include:

• Building niche offerings with more “market-leading” brokers.
• Building out its employee value proposition.
• Concentrating on building productivity and efficiencies.
• Exploring technology and innovation solutions to improve customer experience and enhance client data protection.
• Settling $1.5 billion in its first year.

“Flint will be the #1 Independent brokerage in Australia in FY25,” the duo said.