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ISCOVER
One of the newest comparison sites on the block; MakesCents.com.au began as an idea to deliver competitive quotes from difficult-to-access financial services direct to the consumer.
From 2018 up until 2020 it was doing exactly that. Working with household brand-name service providers to deliver life insurance quotes, TPD and Income protection quotes, health insurance quotes and home loan comparisons from leading mortgage broker groups and direct lenders.
It wasn’t until the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, where these professional services pulled back and exposed an Achilles heel in the model.
The comparison model was dependent upon the capacity of its service provider partnerships. When that demand and capacity dried up in the 2020 Covid Lockdowns, the executive team at MakesCents David Bodnar and Jimmy L’Almont decided to take the bull by the horns and become masters of their own destiny.
Assessing all of the verticals that they operate in and generate quotes for, a decision was made to move into the mortgage broking space. This would see them vertically integrate, providing not only consumer quotes but full credit advice and facilitating the mortgage broking transaction in-house. Basically, marrying a lead generation agency to a full-blown mortgage brokerage.
“Mortgage Broking was the lowest barrier to entry for us, in contrast to full financial services and financial advice, it just made sense (pardon the pun) to partner with a great aggregator and get the ball rolling. Finsure was that aggregator and they’ve helped us immensely in steering our ambition”. – Jimmy L’Almont
“Essentially, MakesCents.com.au Home Loans is two “marketing guys” with a strong understanding of advertising and lead generation, having a crack at providing mortgage broking services.” Said David Bodnar (General Manager).
“In the first 12 months of 2021/2022, we made pretty much every mistake you could make in setting up and running an effective mortgage brokerage. Our clients where well looked after, but we had the wrong recipe. Wrong staff. Wrong Goal. Wrong internal process. Wrong technology, and these things just painfully took time for us to figure out.”
Come 2023, MakesCents.com.au Home Loans settled just over $100m with two mortgage brokers and two settlement officers. It would be safe to say that they have found the recipe and have emerged from the raw start-up phase they’ve been in over the past two years.
The company is poised to make some large waves in the mortgage broking space thanks to the backing of its parent company; EMBR Group, a lead generation powerhouse in the financial services industry for the past decade.
This is a venture with the drive, ambition, capital and expertise to grow a significant broking business.
“We now have a viable and profitable model that is primed for scale, it is now about sustainable multiplication” says Mr L’Almont. Who has also indicated that they have had a number of offers for either buy out or investment capital, even in these initial phases.
There is a fresh approach to the mortgage broking space that these ‘outsiders’ bring. They don’t see the model through the traditional lens. They are customer-centric, user-experience minded and young enough to have a long-term vision, beyond the initial transaction.
The mortgage space, whether it be direct lending or via a mortgage broker is intimidating for most and overwhelming or arduous at best. The MakesCents philosophy has been to provide
The initial model is a digital-human hybrid brokerage. Using the best-in-class technology off the shelf, with some in-house created technology to cater to the consumer’s experience and journey.
Being backed by EMBR Group, gives MakesCents.com.au Home Loans full access to creatives, developers, marketers and out of the box thinking when approaching the lending space.
MakesCents.com.au’s expansion plans include growing its hybrid digital-human mortgage brokerage in 2024, hiring across the board. There are top-secret plans for disruption and technology creation, along with plans to execute the same vertical-integration across complimentary financial services like financial planning, health insurance and life insurance.
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