Katie Thomas from Focus Finance made history as the first woman to top the Elite Broker residential ranking, writing a staggering $496 million in loans in just one financial year. We sat down with the Hunter Valley-based broker to find out how her three-person team managed to lodge nearly 1,000 applications and what it takes to scale a regional brokerage into a national powerhouse.
Q. You've been a broker for six year. What prompted you to transition from banking into mortgage broking?
I've been a broker for six years bu in finance for 17 years, including 12 years at Westpac. I did a lot of different lending there—commercial, business banking, agri equipment, and home lending. I just wanted to do it en masse... more than just one singular policy.
This content is available exclusively to
The Adviser premium members.
When I first left Westpac in 2019, I worked with another team for a pocket of time before it eventually merged into our own business, Focus Finance.
Q: Was there anything that surprised you moving from banking to broking?
The difference in valuations surprised me. I knew there was a bit of variance but I didn't quite realise in those early days how much variance there was between bank vals. When we did refinance or equity extract, I definitely noticed it.
Q: You wrote $496 million in residential loans across 280 loans over FY25. How has your process evolved to manage such a massive volume of loans?
We have enormous ability within the whole team. I don’t do anything by myself. There is nothing - not a single dollar of anything that I’ve ever written - that I’ve done on my own.
We use a segregated model where roles align with the process of a file. The front end has specific roles to automate the intake of information and pre-vet files. The broker then does the meeting and makes the recommendation, but the funding position, cash flow analysis, and servicing are all pre-loaded by the support team.
Once approved, it’s handed off to a settlement and post-settlement team. The post-settlement team is really watching the client’s strategy—monitoring revaluations for equity extraction or price points—so the broker can stay focused on the "big ticket" items.
Q. What has been your point of difference in building referral relationships?
Early days, I think I came in from a level of curiosity. There was no hard sell. It was: "I want to understand you and your business and let’s get to know each other as people."
If the price of that relationship is your integrity, the cost is too high, we won’t do it. We really only work with other referral parties where our values are aligned and we have the same care factor for a client.
Because I’ve done that for a period of time, the book becomes self-propagating.
If you continue to consistently do the most ordinary things in an extraordinary way, it ends up being an absolute beast of a lead funnel.
Q. What’s on the horizon for Focus Finance?
We’re absolutely full steam on scale. We’ve geared up our systems and our backend support team to be able to build that out. We already have a "lead problem" in terms of being able to service everybody, so we need to maintain high quality while expanding.
The intention is to take what we do and do it more broadly across the country, not just localised here in the Hunter Valley. We are having bigger conversations now about that expansion.
Q. What advice would you share with brokers looking to scale?
Systems before scale, systems before scale every single time. Get that down, know why you’re doing it, and know your mission statement. If you do it back to front, you’re going to be in the hurt locker for ages and it’s going to be very difficult to unwind yourself.
Q. What do you think would make broking better?
I’d also love to see more women in the industry feeling empowered. You can be a mum, you can go to every school assembly, and you can run a company if you want. It is possible; I’ve built my whole career while being a mother. You don’t have to choose. You can absolutely have both.
Tune in to hear more! Find out more about Focus Finance’s record-breaking year and their "systems-first" approach in the Elite Broker podcast episode, ‘Lessons from the most prolific mortgage broker 2025’, here:
