Q. What made you pursue broking as a career?
I spent 20 years in lending, and I never ever thought I’d be in broking. I absolutely loved lending. Development-wise though, I got to a stage in my career where the next stage was leadership, but I didn’t want to manage people. So here I am.
Q. You’ve worked in car finance and for BOQ and NAB before launching MediFund, which specialises in medical asset finance. What was it like starting your own brokerage?
I didn’t write volume straight away. I spent the first six months being a BDM in my business, setting up the foundations, and setting up the relationships. I was very fortunate that very shortly after I launched MediFund, I partnered with a company called Business for Doctors.
Business for Doctors has an audience and membership of 38,000 doctors Australia-wide.
And I work very closely with a gentleman over there by the name of Paul Jarvis. I knew him from my NAB days. He runs Business for Doctors Finance, which is all the mortgage side.
We did some deals together, and it just worked.
Q. Why did you decide to start your own brokerage rather than opt for a branded group?
It has been an experience having a bring-your-own business versus a franchise business – creating everything from the name to your logo and websites and starting from scratch. You become an accidental business owner when you become a broker. I guess you don’t think about that piece too much. But it’s really cool building something that’s yours.
Q. What challenges came up in your first year that you weren’t expecting?
It’s a whole new role, and I hear this from a lot of resi brokers as well. You go from a bank where you’ve got one set of policy, one set of pricing, one credit team, one settlements team, one appetite and direction, and then you go to this scattergun. You’ve got 40 lenders that all have different levers and what they do and don’t like. Just getting your head around that – it’s a lot.
Q. What challenges came up in your first year that you weren’t expecting?
It’s a whole new role, and I hear this from a lot of resi brokers as well.
You go from a bank where you’ve got one set of policy, one set of pricing, one credit team, one settlements team, one appetite and direction, and then you go to this scattergun.
You’ve got 40 lenders that all have different levers and what they do and don’t like.
Just getting your head around that – it’s a lot.
Q. Last year, you also opened a Loan Market franchise in Brisbane with another broker. How did that come about?
Kylie Rapson is my business partner. I was very fortunate to be introduced to Kylie when I started as an asset finance broker by our amazing BDM, Matt Thompson, who’s been in the industry for a very long time. Kylie actually turned into a mentor for me. She’s been absolutely amazing. That developed into a really close friendship, and now we’re business partners.
An opportunity came for a Loan Market stand-alone asset finance brokerage. When we saw it come up, we were like, “Do we take this on? We’ve got enough – do we want to get greedy?”
But it was too good of an opportunity. As we thought more and more about it, we thought it would be an opportunity to create an asset finance company that’s very female-orientated.
Q. What advice would you give to someone starting out in asset finance?
I would drip-feed asset finance into my business. Engage someone like myself or Kylie, where we’re happy to help brokers, run scenarios, work with you.
We gain a lot of business from doing that because there are gonna be weird and wonderful things that that broker has come across their desk they simply don’t have the accreditation for.
