A new FBAA initiative puts relationships at the centre of broking’s increasingly technology-driven business landscape to protect the industry’s human advantage.
The Finance Brokers Association of Australia (FBAA) has unveiled REAL BROKER 27 to help its members harness technology, deepen client relationships, and build sustainable businesses.
Launched at its national industry conference in Sydney on Wednesday (28 October), which was attended by The Adviser, the initiative converts the association’s “still human” philosophy into an action plan for 2027, intended to keep brokers “indispensable” as technology reshapes financial services.
Speaking to The Adviser, FBAA chief executive Leo Gagic said the initiative recognised that adopting AI and preserving personal service were complementary, rather than competing priorities.
“We’ve announced the concept of real broker, which is AI is emerging, technology is there, you’ve got to adopt, you can use it really well in your business to build a sustainable business but at the end of the day, your clients and consumers still want to deal with a real person, a real broker, there’s always going to be a place for a real broker,” he said.
That human connection extended beyond arranging individual transactions, with Gagic identifying empathy and ongoing support through complexity as foundations for longer-term client relationships.
“At the end of the day, your book is based on relationships. Consumers want empathy; they want to sometimes navigate through complex deals, and they want someone there that can potentially handle almost a whole-of-life type of offering,” he said.
“So what we’ll be focusing on is how do we make our members build better relationships.
“It’s going to come down to, do I trust you, do I have a relationship with you, and that’s where that human element is going to thrive, and doing that well can provide a competitive advantage, and that’s what I think is missing in the industry at the moment.”
Replacing information overload with more relevant support
REAL BROKER 27 organises support around four stages: new broker – building foundations; grow broker – developing capability, clients and momentum; scale broker – strengthening systems, teams and leadership; and legacy broker – building long-term value and planning succession.
The FBAA said members would have access to shorter learning opportunities addressing business challenges, targeted events, weekly webinars, responsible AI guidance and tools supporting communication and client relationships.
Gagic, who became CEO in June, said in determining the new plan, he had examined the association’s services firsthand to understand how someone entering the industry would experience them.
He said he “was doing a heavy listening to observations. I was doing mystery shopping, so I was actually calling our own organisation, going on our chatbots, calling our own contact centres, going on social media, looking at industry events, and pretending I was a new broker to the industry.”
His assessment was that the volume of available material could obscure its relevance, particularly given the considerable differences between members’ businesses.
“The revelation was too much of everything, too many events, too much information, how is it relevant to where I am in the business life cycle of things?” he said.
“Because what we’ve got to appreciate is [that] a broker business could be one or two people, it could be 50 people, could be 200 people, they could be two years in, they could be 10 years in, they could be 30 years in.
“So how do you then pivot to make the education, the networking events, the information relevant to where you are in your business?”
Gagic added that the cost and time involved in accessing support made simplifying that experience an important part of helping members sustain their businesses.
“When you’re a broker and you’re time-poor and your time is really precious, and you’ve also got to fund certain stuff, how do you break through the red tape and provide them a simple path to get what they need to make sure they’re building a sustainable business?” he said.
The association’s new approach would consider lending specialisation alongside business development, recognising that members’ needs differ across both their markets and career stages.
“So through our simplification approach, we’ll figure out what brokers do, whether they focus on commercial, asset, or residential, or combination, and where are they in the broker journey,” he said.
“So across those broker journey categories of where you are in the life cycle, that’s going to really dictate what you need and what we will be providing to each cohort of members moving forward.”
Association overhaul accompanies the broker initiative
The responsible AI focus sits against wider scrutiny of technology governance, with ASIC repeatedly urging financial service businesses and credit licensees to ensure oversight keeps pace with adoption.
Gagic said preparing members for change also required the FBAA to modernise its own operations.
“We are well into what I’d call our transformation of things internally, we want brokers to be future-ready, and this means we’ve also got to be future-ready,” he said.
That internal investment encompasses technology, leadership, and quality assurance, including a planned CRM launch and pursuit of accreditation, which Gagic described as an industry first.
“We’re making big investments, we’ve got a major technology transformation underway, we’ve got a new CRM coming out in March, we’ve optimised things like our AI chatbot,” he said.
“We’ve got a new executive line-up team, we’ve put in a head of quality assurance and compliance, and we’re going through which will be first in industry ISO 9001, quality management system accreditation.”
Gagic said the work was intended to establish an ongoing improvement framework, making the association accountable for the quality of members’ experiences.
“What that is about is about building continuous framework, so making sure that we’re also holding ourselves accountable for continuous improvement to make sure we do it right for our members and delight them in terms of their experience,” he said.
[Related: Mortgage slowdown sharpens tensions over selective cashback offers]
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