With a new year providing fresh opportunities, we wanted to know what brokers are prioritising this year. This month we ask…
Setting realistic expectations with clients
SETTING REALISTIC expectations can be hard with some clients. [It’s about] the rising cost of living, rising interest rates, managing their budgets, and helping them to understand it. There are a lot of clients who are really stressed about their repayments and wanting to downsize, wanting to cut their expenses and their mortgage repayments.
At the same time, there are a lot of clients wanting to get into more debt [to] purchase properties and take advantage of what they see as another big growth year ahead [in] property.
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So, for both ends of the spectrum it really is managing expectations, helping them with the guidance and advice to manage their budgets to achieve those goals on both sides.
Kyle Manson, CFC Financial
Learning the lay of the land
I've been broking for 13 months and, for me, the biggest challenge has been around juggling/setting up the structure of my business while also managing and bringing sales in.
You start [thinking]: “I’ve got to get those sales in to pay the bills”, then all of a sudden, [you realise] you’re doing things really inefficiently. So, you start working on processing, but then your focus is taken away from sales. There’s just so many bits and pieces you have to learn.
I’m also finding it really frustrating not being able to speak to the credit team with some lenders. It ends up going backwards and forwards for days on end and it’s a very bad experience for the client.
Terence Hammond, Mortgage Choice Colebee
The balance between tech and people
It can be hard finding a balance between maintaining personal connections and integrating technology into the business.
[The question is] how much do you have someone else do, while still maintaining your level of service? Especially as your business is growing. Do you double down on tech or do you back off tech until it’s changed? Do you double down on onshore or do you double down on offshore? It’s all a question mark because there’s no right or wrong way to go about it.
A lot of really good brokers want to simplify things and they are doing really well as they’ve got everything bolted into their aggregator platform. But all the other tech that’s out there is probably going to ‘talk’ better with something that’s not [in the aggregator platform].
Ollie Lum, Breath Loans
Inconsistencies with credit assessor staff
I think a lot of brokers will tend to agree with me here, but it’s got to be consistency across lenders and their assessors. It doesn’t matter which bank it is!
You want to be confident that you can submit a deal to a bank and you’re going to have a consistent decision applied by each assessor at the bank. But there are so many cases where I submit two pretty similar types of deals and depending on where that deal falls and which desk within that bank, you could get a completely different set of responses.
I think it’s so important that the lenders keep striving to focus on having consistency.
Luke Harborne, IFA Mortgages
