Find out how the founder of home loan brokerage Ascension Finance is using technology to stay ahead and his top tip for brokers starting out.
Why did you become a broker?
My dad was a senior manager at AGC, one of Australia's largest finance companies at the time, and he asked if I wanted to go to work with him. I initially worked in a new business area processing interest-free finance applications that were coming in, but I eventually found my way into the debt collection department. I stayed in collections for about 18 years… I started referring debtors to specialist lenders to help them refinance and consolidate debt to get back on track… Eventually, I had to gain a Cert IV [Certificate IV in Finance & Mortgage Broking qualification] so that I could oversee that side of things.
This content is available exclusively to
The Adviser premium members.
After a while, we decided that we were going to relocate to Newcastle from Brisbane…I had about 12 months in between leaving that role and relocating and decided that mortgage broking seemed like a good option. It would allow me to run my own business, I had the Cert IV and I had an idea of what the industry was like.
Has the property boom in Newcastle changed your role as a broker?
A lot of first-home buyers in Newcastle really want to live where they grew up and where their parents live, and they just can't do that now. They've been pretty much priced out of that inner-Newcastle market. So, trying to educate people or give them that understanding that they might need to move a little bit further out (which in Newcastle is 30 minutes) is important… That side of things is definitely a challenge that we're seeing a lot more of.
Lots of the houses in Newcastle are older as well so a large number of people want to spend money on renovations. And for people who bought their home 10 to 15 years ago, they don't really have massive mortgages. They were able to buy a home for a pretty decent price, but they're now worth good money. So they're spending money to renovate those properties... It’s been a bit of a change from that aspect.
What tech do you use to make your job easier?
I've recently started to delve into the ChatGPT and AI... I taught it to understand my business, my brand and my tone of voice. I've then used it to generate 30 days worth of social media posts. That's all now ticking away in the background so I don't have to touch that.
Day to day I use BrokerEngine alongside our CRM. We use it for gathering up documents for our clients, setting aside loan structures, preparing loan strategy reports and for day-to-day checklists. You can look at where a deal is at any particular stage to make sure we're doing everything that's required at that stage before moving to the next.
Outside of that, I use Calendly for all my appointment bookings. Very rarely do I go back and forth over email with a client to try and find a time that suits us both. The other one I use a lot is Bonjoro, which is a video tool where I can send a video SMS to a client to give them an update on their loan process… Once a client books an appointment with me, I'll often send them a welcome video personalised to them.
What would you do to make the broking industry better?
I would aim to make broking a more seamless process. I think there are two parts of the process. One is when the client is engaged with us as the broker and then we hit that imaginary line where we go from broker world into lender land. That's where we start to see a lot of that friction and frustration start to happen because every lender's got a different process.
Some lenders have got that process absolutely nailed. Some think they do but they’re far from the mark. A lot of lenders fail to acknowledge that we’re introducing our clients to them as their future customers. They should be rolling out the red carpet for them and making that process as seamless and as simple as possible for them to be assessed and onboarded.
If I was head of a broker third-party channel and I can see that 74 per cent of loans are being written by brokers, I'd want to be asking the question, ‘how do I win that market share?’ It's not through rate. It's through making the process as easy as possible for the broker so we can get a deal approved inside a cooling-off period, inside a finance clause and have a smooth settlement process.
What advice would you give to new brokers?
Try and identify a good network of other like-minded brokers that you can use to bounce ideas off and run scenarios by. I've got a group of brokers who I catch up with on a monthly basis via a quick Zoom call… We talk about numbers and how many deals we lodged, what our settlements were, what our volumes were for that particular month, what trends we're seeing, what we want to do within our business.
We also hold ourselves accountable. So if someone says: ‘I'm going to do that this month’, we'll ask them the following month: ‘How did that go?’
I try to catch up with other brokers in my local area for coffee and lunches. Although technically we're competitors, we don't see each other as competition... It's important to understand what trends they're seeing because often you get frustrated by something and think you're the only one experiencing it but being able to talk to somebody else and realising that it's happening everywhere, helps... Having that network is really important.
Find out more about Joel Archer’s experience in running a growing brokerage and his top tips for brokers in The Adviser's Elite Broker podcast episode below:
Make sure you’re subscribed to The Adviser’s bulletin to ensure you never miss a beat and never miss a podcast episode by subscribing to us now on your preferred podcast provider!
