Jason Cuerel of Mortgage Innovations was crowned Queensland’s broker with the Best Customer Service, while his business won the award for Best Regional Office at the Better Business Awards Queensland 2022. We catch up with him to find out more.
Earlier this year, Jason Cuerel of Mortgage Innovations was crowned Queensland’s broker with the Best Customer Service at the Better Business Awards (Queensland), with his office winning the award for Best Regional Office, too.
We find out his top tips for success.
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How did you become a broker?
I reached out to Aussie Home Loans and Wizard Home Loans about 15 years ago after I realised I had great sales skills and a knack for understanding numbers, spreadsheets and analysing data from the previous jobs I worked in Brisbane.
What were you doing before you were a broker?
I was working at a hi-fi retail store and I was setting up a stereo for a couple when I told them my story about changing industries, and one of them said that she’d like me to have a chat with the director of her business. We set up a meeting with David Vickerman at Pacific Mortgage Corporation and I was offered a job within half an hour and that set me off on my journey.
How long was it before you ventured out on your own in the industry?
I worked at Pacific Mortgage Corporation for close to 18 months. I wrote some really good numbers with them and they were happy with me, but I became frustrated after my father was looking for a loan and I couldn’t arrange that for him…
As a result, I no longer enjoyed working in that business and decided to go out on my own and become a mortgage broker.
You recently won an award for your customer service. What do you consider to be good customer service and how do you provide that?
One of the focuses for me in relation to customer service is not rushing the process regarding their home loans. We’re far from the philosophy of a quick “catch and grab” for a customer.
I believe it’s extremely important to have a good understanding of listening to a client, what they need and not just trying to get a quick “yes” out of them. We take our time and find out what they want to do.
What kind of loans are you writing at the moment?
We do a lot of prime stuff these days. We’ve got a really good database with people who have good incomes and self-employed clients with good incomes as well. I don’t have to do a lot of non-conforming nowadays. Percentage-wise, we’d probably write about 5–10 per cent of loans outside of the box from the likes of Liberty, La Trobe, Resimac, etc.
We’re quite fortunate that our database is now mature and that we’re getting a lot of referrals from clients who have good financial profiles, which makes it easier for us to get their loans approved.
How are you protecting your clients from the distress of rising interest rates?
It’s a frustrating time in relation to interest rates, and we’ve already assisted a large number of clients in regard to that.
We have a lot of clients coming off fixed rates and it’s difficult to justify suggesting to a client to refix their loan when there’s close to 1.5–2 per cent difference going to fixed.
It works very much like my usual discussions with clients, it’s about their budget and moving forward. I’m suggesting to my clients that not only do they need to work out if they can afford the rate as what it is now, but whether they’ll still be able to afford it if rates continue to rise since the banks and the RBA have indicated the cash rate might rise to 2 per cent over the next year and a half.
Clients need to be considering that when applying for a home loan.
Do you have any advice for new brokers out there?
The best advice I can give to any broker is: the sooner you can look at taking someone on as a client service manager or loan support officer, the sooner you’ll be able to focus on seeing more clients, seeing referrers and not focusing on the back-end work of processing loans.
My primary focus in relation to customer service is having that initial client conversation but sometimes that does get taken by other staff when I’m unavailable.
You can find out more about Jason Cuerel and how he runs his brokerage in The Adviser’s Elite Broker podcast.
Tune in to the episode with Jason, Delivering award-winning customer service in the Gold Coast, below:
[Related: Delivering award-winning customer service in the Gold Coast]
