Banker-turned-broker Ben Finis reveals how he finds new leads and his business goals for 2025.
You were previously a home lending manager at Australia and New Zealand Banking (ANZ), what challenges did you face when you moved into broking?
Going from ANZ into the broking world wasn't a massive jump…[I] knew the intimate details of finance prior to moving over, which was a really big benefit from my end.
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Moving into broking you just needed to understand 30 or 40 different lenders compared to the one lender that you’re working for. So that was a challenge, or a big change, moving across.
You offer both residential and commercial broking. What is the hardest thing to grasp when starting commercial loan writing?
I think it's probably just an understanding of the different ways that [brokers] read financials…For a broker, if you're writing resi and not writing commercial or not writing asset…they are just other lines of income that you're missing out on.
I think it's really important that, if we've got a client in front of us, we are making sure that we look after them to the absolute fullest that we can. That way they don't need to be going to another broker or another bank to do those things.
What trends are you seeing from South Australian borrowers at the moment?
There's quite a bit in the development space in Adelaide. I don't do the huge developments but the one-into-five or one-into-four [development], is where I see quite a bit.
In the commercial space, we're seeing a lot of businesses buying their owner-occupied premises. We've been seeing that for quite a while and a lot of that is now also happening in self-managed super funds...
[We also] see your investor looking to increase their property portfolio, your mum and dad looking to get into that next home, and we're seeing a lot of downsizing, as well, in the Adelaide market... The Adelaide market has held its own for the last few years which is great.
How do you generate new business?
When I first started it was a lot of cold calling; I would call as many people as I had to… to get a deal done. Now we've been able to build some really good referral networks; real estate agencies in the state, some big accounting firms, financial planning firms. So we're a referral-based business at the moment.
Our clients are our best advocates. We do get a lot of business and repeat business from our clients, whether we're looking after their friends and family, their sons, daughters, looking to purchase.
We're now at the point where we're wanting to grow that little bit further and making sure that the public know us. So we're advertising quite a bit.
What are your business goals for FINANCIA in 2025?
We're launching a buyers agency. Leon and I have our RLA [Residential Letting Agent Licence] so we’re able to open up a real estate agency. We’re looking at launching early in the new year.
[It’s] a space that we've felt (for many years) that the Adelaide market is lacking; someone to work on behalf of the purchaser. We've got so many clients that we've seen who have unfortunately missed out on purchasing property over the last two or three years. If they had someone working on their side, we feel like they would have been able to purchase a lot sooner and potentially save themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So, it is something that is very, very green in terms of the business but very exciting.
What advice would you give to new brokers starting out?
The first couple of years are the hardest. So work really, really hard for those first few years. Get your name out there and try to meet as many people as you can.
You need to surround yourself with really good people [which] helps you grow your business, helps you stay afloat and helps you manage your business in a really good way.
So, work hard and surround yourself with really good people.
Find out more about the big plans Ben Finis has for the brokerage this year in The Adviser's Elite Broker podcast episode below:
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