Many brokers may still see outsourcing as costly and risky. But for others, getting help has been the best growth facilitator — and stress reliever — in their broker business strategy. Free yourself by empowering others so you can do your best. Put simply, trust outsourcing
Outsourcing has historically been an unpopular choice for brokers, with many feeling concerned about offloading their client and processes to a stranger. However, as brokers become increasingly busier, and compliance increases, more are looking to outsource different parts of the business — and wishing they had done so earlier.
Unfortunately, too often this fearful thinking and hesitancy towards outsourcing persist. Yet what if using another great company to look after key elements of your broker business, or hiring just “the right staff” to help you deliver just “the right stuff” is the only way to free yourself, so you can get on with doing the essential roles that you really excel at?
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For some successful brokers this has been the only way they’ve ensured their business growth and success — and they swear by it.
Here, The Adviser chats to broker-outsourcing proponents who not only embraced it but now continue to harness the potential of outsourcing each day going forward.
First Choice Mortgage Brokers director Tony Bice
If anyone should know something about outsourcing, Finance Broker of the Year 2021 award winner Tony Bice should.
“The success behind any mortgage broker is to outsource. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t outsource, then you do everything [and] you’ll get capacity very quickly. If you bite the bullet and outsource different tasks then it frees you up to do what you do best,” Mr Bice said.
“So I outsourced everything and a good example is our search engine optimisation strategy, with our website.
“We’re on the front page of Google and I get anywhere upwards of six to 12 leads a week just off the web.”
Mr Bice said after having built a team around him to specialise in different tasks that he learned he didn’t have to do them himself, it freed him up, so now via the website he rings up clients as part of what he does best, which is business development and initial processes before passing it on his team.
“There’s a balance that brokers need to understand about not putting the cart before the horse; I think you need to ground yourself and become good at what you do as a broker to start with,” he explained.
“When the time feels right and it’s time to expand then outsource — starting with people around you to help you within your business.”
Zippy Financial principal broker Louisa Sanghera
With many brokers perhaps contemplating outsourcing with trepidation or not knowing even how to start, Mortgage and Finance Broker of the Year 2021 award-winner and finalist in the Innovator of the Year categories in 2019, Louisa Sanghera reveals she had a template in mind for what she needed done.
“You have to go to the outsourcing companies because they’ve got their idea of what they’re going to give you, which a lot of them didn’t fit,” she explained.
“It wasn’t enough for me. So I went and said, ‘That’s great, but I need da, da, da. Can you do that?’ If you can’t, let me know because I don’t want to waste your time or mine.
“But I was very specific with what my requirements were and I didn’t want anybody that was under two years in the job. As I say, I was willing to pay well for them, but I needed them to have a certain skillset because I didn’t want to train.”
In terms of those sought-after skills, Ms Sanghera expanded: “Experience! The experience was like, ‘Can you do the debt servicing?’; I wanted my processors to be able to check the credit team’s work on the debt-servicing calculators, so could they do that?
“It was just specifying each task what I wanted them to do and then they went out and they targeted people working under other agencies to try and bring the experienced staff in for me.
“There’s loads of companies now out there that you can go to.”
GSC Finance Solutions managing broker Matt Turner
“We do have a really small team. Outsourcing people assists us in punching above our weight a little bit because they do take a lot of… downtime off us, which is the processing, the data entry, the sitting on 13 numbers, emailing backwards and forwards with the admin teams at banks and all that sort of thing,” Matt Turner explained.
“We’re pretty fortunate there, but in terms of the hands-on stuff we do have a bit of separation between us and client services, but we don’t have a point where it gets submitted and then I drop off; I handle everything from start to finish in terms of the client interaction.”
Mr Turner said after the buy-in from the client, at that point he outsources.
“We fill in obviously all the compliance information, and a fact find. We then hand that off to our outsourcing provider,” Mr Turner said.
“They then send us everything back within 24 hours. Application forms, SOCAs — everything else we need to complete the file.
“Then it’s back over Leah to send out the application forms to our clients, again digitally where possible. She’ll then collect all the information and send it back to outsourcing people to lodge it.
“They handle the lodgement process. We obviously still have all the interaction with the credit teams, but they do all our follow-ups for us.
“We get it to the point where it’s approved and then settled and then post settlement, we as a broker… install all the reviews and post some of the questions and all that sort of thing.”
The Finance Room director and broker Kristy de Poel
After an initial conversation with a client to assess their needs, Kristy de Poel then utilises outsource providers.
“I will always introduce my [outsource] team, the Powerhouse Loan Processing team,” Ms de Poel explained.
“Then I go and go away and do my work. Once we’ve figured out which lender and which product to structure and I’ve gathered all of the documents from that client, the file goes to Powerhouse.”
At that point, the application is finalised by the Powerhouse “girls” with Ms de Poel doing the final checks.
“I will then press submit on [the] application online, and the girls [Powerhouse, which describes itself as ‘an extension of you’] track it for me… through to settlement,” Ms de Poel said.
“So, all of my clients are updated every two to three days, which is something that I’ve always been really, really adamant about even if there’s nothing to tell a client… so that they know that they’re front of mind. That’s really important.
“Once the loan has settled, it comes back in house and my colleagues, Sue and Megan, look after my aftercare, or help me with my after-settlement care with all of my clients.”
In terms of referrals, Ms de Poel said: “I refer my clients to people that I trust and also think that they will form a good relationship with. I think that’s really important for me.
“People that refer business to me are like-minded people who refer their clients to me because they know the level of service that they’re going to achieve.”
Directional Finance broker and credit adviser Caroline Mundey
“Staffing has been a very difficult part of the journey,” said Caroline Mundey, “Especially in regional parts of Australia. However, the solution that we found to that was to outsource.”
For Directional Finance, outsourcing locally was important.
“I know there’s a lot of conversation about outsourcing overseas, and a lot of brokers do that,” Ms Mundey said.
“We didn’t want to go to a company where you had five different people. It was important that we had one person that was a part of our team even though they are employed by someone else. They’re still a part of the team.”
Outsourcing has also proven to be a great way of handling staff shortages, she added.
[Related: New outsourcing provider launches for brokers]
