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Three of the industry's elite commercial brokers explain why and how they make commercial lending a priority in their business.
Jeremy Fisher, director, 1st Street Home Loans:
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“There are about 10 people who work in the office. Predominately it's mortgage brokers and commercial brokers, and we’ve got a couple of support staff.
It’s only been the last few years that we’ve really focused on the commercial lending side of the business in regards to actually bringing it in-house, and I think that has been quite a challenge, but also quite a successful move to actually upskill ourselves in the commercial space.
Within the office, there are a couple of brokers who are doing commercial lending, and the remaining brokers are referring to them effectively.
What we’ve found is most commercial clients have residential business and vice versa, so there’s still a lot of opportunity out there that’s reasonably untapped.
We’ve all got clients in front of us that have potential multiple opportunities to do business for them. The more you do for the client, the stickier that client becomes.”
Andrew Kelly, principal, Anasta Finance Consulting:
“The numbers through commercial are rising and they’re rising quite dramatically. I see that continuing because I think we as brokers can offer so much more to a client than a commercial manager can – we offer variety, choice and time.
As far as percentages go between commercial and residential, if this was five or six years ago, commercial wasn’t a big part of it because the banks were really quite tight on commercial.
That circumstance has changed now and the commercial appetite is there, and it’s continuing on. Where it was once 10 to 20 per cent of the business, it’s now 40 [per cent].”
Greg Wells, partner, Well Partners/Mortgage Link Group:
“I spent 25 years in the banking industry, and in 2001 I started as a broker and [then as] a commercial broker.
Back in 2001, there was a booming home loan market and not all banks paid trail for commercial loans, so I’ve gone through this journey from 2001 to today where it’s been about commercial being a major thrust.
Fifty per cent of our loans are commercial – that includes leasing – and the other 50 per cent is home loans.
We’re [taking] a holistic approach with our referral partners, like a one-stop shop, so we can do everything.”
