Back to the beginning: Part 3

Wise people though will tend to see lessons among the ghosts – applying the benefit of hindsight to events of yesteryear in order to calculate what was done well, what improvements could be made in similar situations and what should never be repeated at all cost.

Such introspection is arguably at its most valuable at times of upheaval. And for the broking industry, that time of upheaval is now.

Ongoing regulatory scrutiny, lender rate changes applied seemingly on a whim, increasing competition among your broking peers – not to mention the confusion of consumers as to where they can and cannot now borrow funds – means that uncertainty is the word du jour.

How will brokers adapt to this change? From our vantage point, brokers have all the necessary tools and experience in place not just to survive, but to thrive. Yet it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re amidst the quagmire.

Over the past several months, we have looked at the industry’s past – its challenges, its breakthroughs, its embracing of change and its adaptability. And it’s interesting to see just how many comparisons can be made between then and now. As Steve Sampson at Bank of Sydney aptly notes, “sometimes the future is different, but it’s also very much the same”.

With this in mind, The Adviser is pleased to present the third and final instalment of our series investigating the evolution of broking – in which we bring together all of the various elements of years gone by, and from that, examine which directions the industry is steering towards going forward.

A WORD OF THANKS

A feature like this doesn’t happen by accident. In fact, The Adviser has spent several months researching, interviewing and compiling the list of key events, people and companies that have made the broking industry what it is today.

Of course the industry is not shaped by just a handful of individuals – every single participant within the industry has, does and will continue to shape it as it evolves to meet changing consumer needs.

We spoke with just a small number of people from across the country and the broking spectrum for this feature – sadly it is just not possible to speak with everyone.

A huge thanks goes out to all of those individuals and organisations The Adviser spoke with to put this feature together.

We would also like to pay homage to those who have retired from the industry and pay our respects to those veterans no longer with us. And to those who we did not speak with as part of this feature but feel you have something to say, please get in touch!

2010: NCCP

Just like a 21st birthday marks our coming of age, the introduction of the National Consumer Credit Protection Act (commonly known as NCCP) marked a significant milestone for broking as an industry.

At last, the third-party channel was recognised as a professional service with its own operating standards and regulatory framework. It also marked the introduction of a cohesive national approach to broking for the first time, ending the hodge podge of state-based legislation that existed previously.

“Effectively, except in WA, brokers weren’t regulated in any forceful fashion until 1 July 2010 when the NCCP Act commenced,” says mortgage solicitor and partner of Gadens law firm, Jon Denovan.

“[NCCP] transferred regulation of credit to the Commonwealth and regulated finance brokers on a nationally consistent basis. It made membership of an external dispute resolution scheme compulsory for lenders and brokers.”

According to Mr Denovan, the introduction of NCCP was not initially seen as a major disruptor for brokers, but over time it became apparent that it was more complex than originally anticipated.

“Over time, it became clear that the responsible lending laws had much more to them than expected,” he says, referring to the ASIC stipulation that required loans to be ‘not unsuitable’.

Yet while the definition of ‘not unsuitable’ was less than clear cut, he notes that the MFAA actually required loans written by members to be ‘appropriate’ for the client – a higher stipulation than the legal minimum.

Arguably the most significant impact of the NCCP introduction was a highly positive one – a clean-out of less reputable or committed brokers from the ranks.

2010: KEY EVENTS

National Consumer Credit Protection Act (NCCP) comes into force from 1 July, providing a national uniform set of regulations for the industry and transferring regulation enforcement and oversight to the federal government.

Vow Financial is formed through the merger of National Brokers Group, The Mortgage Professionals and The Brokerage. Macquarie buys a 20 per cent stake in the newly formed business.

In April, independent aggregation group Outsource Financial is launched.

Mortgage Choice acquires loan comparison site helpmechoose.com.au.

Loan Market acquires NZ PLAN business.

2011: KEY EVENTS

 In July, Mark Bouris' Yellow Brick Road wealth management group lists on the ASX.

Retail finance brokerage Finsure Group is established.

PROFILE: TIM BROWN

From consumer finance and real estate financial service offerings to banking and aggregation – Vow Financial’s CEO Tim Brown has seen the third-party channel grow from virtually every angle...

Like many senior figures in the broking space, Tim Brown has spent the bulk of his work life developing and polishing the service offering of the third-party channel.

Having started his career with Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac), he moved into consumer finance where he forged his understanding of the loanwriting procedure.

“We had to do our own collections back in those days, which was a really good lesson about lending, because they used to say ‘whatever you lent, you had to collect’,” he recalls.

Of course, with that territory came the odd repossession, which provided some memorable tales.

“We once had to pick up a car because it was in arrears, and when we went to drive it away, it didn’t have any brakes!” Mr Brown laughs.

“They obviously didn’t tell us that when we were driving away. Luckily we came to a set of lights and I was able to use the handbrake to stop. It wasn’t funny at the time, but it was funny afterwards.”

But it is his role in helping to establish the sales and distribution platforms for banks and real estate groups for which Mr Brown is most well-known.

He helped to launch the financial services offerings of the LJ Hooker, Elders and RE/ MAX real estate networks, before then moving to Macquarie Bank to expand its intermediary presence and joint venture projects. It was from this position that he led the merger that would create Vow Financial in 2010.

“It was in a discussion with a number of our aggregators who were in that mid-tier two that needed to get scale,” Mr Brown says. “We saw the opportunity and merged three businesses into one.”

2012: Vertical integration debate

Vertical integration became a hot topic of conversation post-GFC, fed further by the high-profile acquisition by CBA of a majority stake in Aussie.

“I look on the CBA ownership very positively,” Aussie chairman John Symond said in 2014 when asked about the group’s ownership structure.

“If I wasn’t positive about CBA, I wouldn’t have done the deal. I always put my money where my mouth is.”

In the same year, AFG’s general manager of sales and operations, Mark Hewitt, said that Macquarie owning shares in the aggregator had no influence on the day-to-day operation of its business.

“They are a shareholder in our business but they don’t hold a seat on our board, so it really doesn’t buy them any favours one way or another,” he said at the time.

Yet not everyone agrees that vertical integration is a good thing for the industry.

“There is no doubt that vertical ownership structures within the mortgage space are of great disadvantage to the consumer,” Troy McErvale, managing director of Freedom Home Loans and My Personal Lender, wrote in an opinion piece in The Adviser in March 2015.

“If they really want to retain any level of esteem, then it’s easy – just be openly transparent about the privileges that the banks are permitted as a direct benefit of the ownership.”

However, according to Sam White, CEO of Loan Market, there is a deep divide between the theory and practice of integration within the mortgage market.

“I do think it is a perception issue with the ASICs of the world: the perceived potential for conflict rather than the reality. I think that perception may still be there with some of the regulation bodies, but the reality I think is very different,” he says.

2012: KEY EVENTS

Aussie acquires nMB.

Longstanding brokerage The Mortgage Gallery – led by one of the industry’s pioneers, John Bignell – merges with Smartline.

Loan Market merges with Allied Kiwi NZ.

SocietyOne becomes one of the first peer-to-peer lenders to launch in Australia, taking advantage of the rise of social and digital media technologies.

In December, CBA increases its stake in Aussie to 80 per cent, sharpening debate about vertical integration.

2013 KEY EVENTS: 

Finsure acquires the LoanKit mortgage aggregation business from Mortgage Choice for an undisclosed sum, dramatically increasing Finsure’s size.

In August, Australian Property Finance (APF) is formed as a joint partnership between global real estate firm RE/MAX and aggregator Vow Financial.

Late in the year, Macquarie Bank buys a 25 per cent stake in aggregator Connective.

2014: Brokers now write the majority of home loans

For an industry that has only existed for less than three decades, reaching the point where brokers now write half of all residential mortgages in Australia is a major achievement.

In a statement issued in May 2014, the MFAA said “the mortgage broker industry has seen its share of home loans provided in Australia double over the last 10 years, to reach a milestone of 50 per cent during the March quarter”.

By the September quarter of 2015, that figure – according to an MFAA report by Comparator – had climbed further to hit 52.6 per cent, firmly cementing brokers as the dominant writer of residential loans nationwide.

“The figures clearly show that mortgage brokers have got their message through to borrowers that they are the best vehicle to find a loan most appropriate to their needs and aspirations,” the MFAA’s then CEO, Phil Naylor, said at the time.

More recently though, statements from mortgage market insiders have suggested that when it comes to residential loans, the broker market may be even larger than that conveyed by official statistics.

MyState Bank’s chairman Miles Hampton, for instance, told the bank’s AGM in October 2015 that “the reality is that two thirds of all new loans written by the banking sector in Australia are being introduced by the broker network. In our case, 70 per cent was broker-introduced”.

2014 KEY EVENTS:

Yellow Brick Road spends $53.6 million to acquire both Vow Financial and Resi Mortgage Corporation.

Loan Market becomes a franchise business.

In November, Timothy Holmes, co-founder of Homeloans Limited, is remembered as one of the key pioneers of the non-bank sector following his death.

40 per cent of new members to the MFAA throughout the year are female, demonstrating the increasing attractiveness of the profession to women.

Marketplace lender DirectMoney begins lending. The group was formed in 2007, although the GFC resulted in a postponement of activity.

The long-awaited findings of the Financial System Inquiry (FSI) are announced, with recommendations including investigating broker commissions and new regulations obliging brokers to disclose their ownership structures. The following year, the government responds by backing most of the recommendations, although it rules out banning SMSF lending for property acquisition.

Broker share of the mortgage market surpasses 50 per cent.

2015 KEY EVENTS:

ASIC and APRA introduce contentious measures to improve bank capitalisation and cool demand from domestic investors in the residential property market.

The federal government announces a crackdown on foreign investors and transfers powers from the FIRB to the ATO for greater enforcement.

Having operated directly with lenders for some 30 years, South Australian mortgage group Bernie Lewis Home Loans reveals in February that Choice has become its aggregator.

In April, a new bank is created as Queensland building society Wide Bay Australia becomes Auswide Bank.

Raine & Horne announces in late October that Raine & Horne Financial Services will be rebranded to Our Broker.

Professionals Finance is established as the national broking arm of The Professionals real estate group.

In November, The Adviser receives word of the death of Tony Wignall – a lawyer and academic who was heavily involved in developing the legal and process sides of third-party loans.

REA Group (parent company of realestate.com.au) reveals plans to enter the mortgage market.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

In many aspects, life runs on a loop – the players may change, but the events seem to repeat themselves, sometimes less obviously so than others.

“I was recently in Indonesia talking to banks there and it brought back memories, because in Indonesia there are no mortgage brokers and I was talking to banks about the same things I was talking about 20 years ago, which was why a broker can help a bank, how it might help customers, how it could be good for both,” says Loan Market’s Sam White.

“It brought back memories of all those discussions and the issues the banks had when we first started here. It was funny to reflect on just how far Australia has come and how much other markets are starting to emerge to do this all over again.”

For such a young industry, broking has made an incredible impact on the Australian mortgage market and cemented its place in the Aussie psyche. Perhaps now it has matured enough to have the wisdom to learn from its past as it looks towards its future.

HOW THE PAST SHAPES THE FUTURE

Learning from past experience is the path towards growing for the future...

Many within the industry believe that broking is now at a key juncture in its history.

“Brokers are again at a crossroads – a time of change,” notes mortgage lawyer Jon Denovan of law firm Gadens.

“Customers are becoming more sophisticated and demanding, largely as a result of the internet, and so they want brokers to do more than just be salespersons. They are looking for education – and help in managing their financial affairs – which creates an intersection with the AFSL regime.”

Indeed, broking is now facing a changing lender environment, a constantly evolving technology landscape, an increasingly sophisticated customer, converging service provision and a boost in its market power as the dominant source of loan origination.

All of these elements are combining to fundamentally shift the role of brokers and the way they support their clients. Confusion, uncertainty and, to some extent, fear proliferate across the sector.

Yet to truly understand how the industry may adapt to these changes, it is beneficial, if not essential, to use the insight of the past – how the channel has overcome changes and challenges previously – to identify how it may again perform in the future.

As Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wisely noted: “life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards”.

It was for this purpose that The Adviser engaged in a three-month long project to delve into the origins and subsequent evolution of broking as an industry, in order to identify parallels between 'then and now'. 

As you will see in these pages, in many instances, the current changes are nothing new but simply a case of history repeating...

Market share

Most of those interviewed by The Adviser believe broker market share will likely grow to between 60 and 80 per cent by 2020.

“I’m really confident that in 2020, customer usage of brokers will have significantly increased,” says MoneyQuest CEO Michael Russell.

“To where it goes, I don’t really know, but I can’t see any signs that tell me that it won’t continue to increase.”

“I think we’re on the path to 70 or 80 per cent in time,” suggests Loan Market’s Sam White.

“The reason why I say that is the UK is now 75 per cent market share and that’s driven largely by the compliance requirements and the need for mortgage lenders to provide comparison services to clients.”

Vow Financial’s Tim Brown offers a similar opinion: “In America, I think at one stage it got to 80 per cent before the GFC struck them. As long as brokers can continue to provide value and clients identify that, then there’s no reason why that can’t continue to climb.”

However, Firstmac’s Kim Cannon suggests that it may be online rather than banks which will provide the greatest challenge to broker market share in the future.

“When we first started doing home lending back in 1990, the four major banks had 100 per cent market share. The same with when we went into online four years ago – it was either through a branch or through a broker. Suddenly there’s a new channel called online. Where is that going to end up?” he ponders.

Several others were uncertain as to whether the third-party can achieve any further growth in the actual percentage of market share, but suggested that growth will continue organically as the population grows.

Overall though, as retired broker Warren Nutt notes: “I feel it’s really accomplished what the industry was about, and even if it didn’t grow any more, the broking industry over the last few decades has had amazing, amazing growth and we should be very happy in the industry with the percentage of total business the broking industry is now writing.”

Regulation

“I think the industry is as regulated as it needs to be right now and if there’s much more of it, it could cause problems,” says Kevin Matthews of AFG.

Yet it’s a mistake to think that the NCCP marks the be all and end all of regulation for the sector. However, this need not be feared.

“Regulation has been a huge issue and I think it’s been our great friend,” says Sam White.

“The vast majority, I think, has led to more confidence in what we do and led to a better and more educated profession. In every stage we’ve gone through, whether back in the late ‘90s through to now, there’s always been a question of ‘this is too much’, but at every point, it’s enabled us to continue to evolve and continue to professionalise and continue to get better at what we do.”

That same view of regulation can be applied to the current situation.

“Look at the market that we’re in today with APRA driving a lot of change with lenders around investment lending. Every time that I’ve sat and looked at any unsettling in the marketplace, I’ve generally found that that’s been an environment for brokers to be more valuable to clients because of the uncertainty,” says nMB’s Gerald Foley.

“This is more unusual than normal because you’ve actually got a strong property market with lots of change being built in. Many other times, it’s been the bubble has burst or there’s been an event that has caused the market to soften and that’s when all the regulatory change occurs. Whereas in this occurrence, it’s almost like changing the wheels on a moving car.”

Tim Brown believes the industry needs to work more closely with regulators to provide them a full understanding of how the broker channel operates: “I’d certainly like to see the industry come together and educate the government on what a great job we do. I think our government bodies, our regulatory groups, are uneducated and are often given the wrong information about the industry.”

Technology

There is debate about how technology may usurp the need for brokers, such as the recent announcement of Google entering the mortgage market in the US. But fears of technology as a threat to brokers are nothing new – broking businesses simply adapt to a changing technology framework.

“There’s a way-we-do-business change going about because of the internet at the moment, how we deal with people,” says Kim Cannon.

“The consumer is highly intelligent these days, and not financially illiterate like we had in 1990.”

Yet as Mr Cannon explains, the increasing role of the internet in the mortgage process is not writing brokers out of the equation.

“The online space isn’t impeding the broking space – some brokers might feel threatened by it, but it’s not. The type of customer we are picking up is a branch customer that you would never see as a broker,” he says.

Yet others, such as MoneyQuest’s Michael Russell, believe that technology still has a way to go to improving and enhancing the broker experience.

“The early promise of electronic lodgement being more time efficient for brokers hasn’t eventuated,” he says.

Mr Russell notes that while online lodgement has taken away the need for fiddly faxes, application completion times have, if anything, actually increased since the early days of broking.

“While broker technology has to continue to evolve, the industry has got to do everything it can to assist brokers to become even more efficient and productive, because at the moment, it is taking an incredibly long time to compliantly submit a loan application.”

Ultimately though, everyone agrees that human contact can never be replaced.

“People still want that personal touch – it’s the humanisation of what it is that you’re doing to assist them,” says FBAA CEO Peter White.

“They want to eyeball you, they actually want a business relationship with you, not just a text or social media contact.”

Value proposition

While everyone knows that the value proposition of broking is unmatched by virtually any other industry, a longer-term commitment from brokers can only enhance this proposition.

“This is what you see with some brokers over the years – they go out, they work really hard for five years, put together a trail book and then go and play golf. Which is a shame with a lot of people, that they don’t continue on or try to develop their business past that,” says Kim Cannon.

But others hold the view that the proposition has only become more valuable as the industry has developed.

“I think the broker value proposition has become more relevant than ever. It’s better than it’s ever been. Australians have embraced property and debt; now more than ever, they need to have someone looking after it for them,” says FirstPoint’s Troy Phillips.

Broker diversity

According to Kathy Cummings, there is something of a failure by the industry to lead by example.

“The thing I’ve always found interesting is that there are no females heading up the big aggregation groups. As a matter of fact, they are very thin on the ground, as far as having senior women,” she points out.

As one of the few female heads of an aggregation group, Tanya Sale of Outsource Financial has a fairly unique perspective on broker diversity – and her opinions are somewhat surprising.

“I would love to see a lot more women coming into our industry; unfortunately though, I do not believe we will see the percentages of women coming into our industry increasing much at all,” she says.

“We say we’re not a nine to five industry, and we’re not. I hear time and again people saying that this gives women flexibility, however it is just not flexibility that women look at. It is about the life influences such as family, safety concerns, irregular hours and the list goes on.”

As well as personal security, several people question whether forcing customers to come to an office during business hours really constitutes customer service – particularly not the level of service for which broking is renowned.

Yet others suggest that women have strong representation on the list of top-performing brokers and their numbers are steadily increasing.

“If you look at the number of women in banks versus men, I think there’s now more women in banking. But that certainly wasn’t the case when I was there,” recalls Tim Brown.

“I’m seeing that shift in banking and I think it’s just a matter of time before it will shift into mortgage broking.”

Lender landscape

Just as past experience has taught, it would be wrong to assume that the existing lender landscape is here to stay.

Specialist lenders are continuing to write larger volumes as brokers increasingly cast a wider eye for lending options for their clients, particularly those with more complex needs.

For many borrowers, this means greater financial options, and that a no from a bank no longer means their request for finance will go unmet altogether.

At the other end of town are the big banks.

When broking came about, the majors were slimming their branch network in a bid to reduce costs. However as we head towards 2020, many are expecting the major banks to increase resourcing of their retail networks – at least in part to ward off  the threat posed by brokers.

ANZ’s recent launch of a dedicated home loan centre in a Sydney shopping centre is one such example.

“The biggest problem the major banks have is retention,” says Troy Phillips.

“Fifty per cent or more of the stuff  on their books these days is generated through some other form other than a direct sale. Just like Aussie stripped all the business off  them years ago, I think it’s going to come again.”

While CBA continues to invest heavily in the broker channel, its group executive of retail banking services, Matt Comyn, told analysts in early 2015 that “brokers will always be an important part of our business, but we are focusing primarily on our proprietary channel”.

Steve Sampson from Bank of Sydney adds that “if banks were to become too reliant on third-party channels, obviously that concentration could be harmful if they weren’t in the market rate-wise, product-wise, service-wise.”

Of course, alongside existing lenders is the likely emergence of new players.

“The other thing is that smaller lenders also have become fairly niche in a lot of ways, so those niches are always welcomed by brokers. Even peer-to-peer and fintech companies will enter broker panels across a range of products in due course, and that could be really interesting,” he says.

Yet it’s not just smaller lenders that are forecast to enter the mortgage market.

“I think the other competitor is likely to be foreign banks,” says YBR’s Matt Lawler.

“Foreign banks see Australia as a really safe part of the world to participate in. I think the final competition is likely to be some left-fi eld competitors, so it could be your Coles, your Woolworths; it could be Google; could be PayPal – groups like that that actually come in and take market share as well.”

Role of the aggregator

“Aggregators are experiencing the pain of some of their lenders – some of the banks,” says Kathy Cummings, the former head of broking and mobile banking at CBA.

“Not to the same degree, but they are understanding the distribution costs, running sales teams and the huge investment in technology that’s required to stay relevant.”

Fundamentally, there are two options for addressing these cost pressures – raise more revenue or cut costs.

A common approach in the former has been to sell stakes, often to the larger banks, in a bid to raise capital. The other alternative is to raise broker fees, a less attractive option in an already competitive marketplace.

“I think banks will take more and more interest in aggregators insofar as fi nancial investment, because it is going to be a channel that can’t be ignored if you’re looking to hold market share or increase market share for that matter. If you have a bank on board, that’s very much a benefi t to you, because they have the experience you don’t necessarily have,” says Steve Sampson.

Cost-cutting meanwhile may increasingly involve policing broker volumes, and striking off those who are not fully committed loan writers.

“Unfortunately there’s a lot of people who go into the broking industry as something they can do part time,” says Kathy Cummings.

“They just weigh the industry down, because people who only write one loan or two loans a month, they clog up the banks’ systems.”

Vow Financial’s Tim Brown agrees, saying: “Margins are squeezed and I don’t think they can be squeezed much more, not without someone actually getting to a point where they are going to struggle to maintain profitability.”

Another option is continued consolidation of the aggregation space, potentially leading to an oligopoly of major aggregators operating alongside the big four banks.

“We believe that what we’ll begin to see in the near future is the formation of some supergroups, where scale is actually very important,” says YBR’s Matt Lawler.

“But I wouldn’t say that’s going to be like that forever ... eventually they start to fragment and break up again. It’s all part of a cycle.”

Broker remuneration

Industry figures are hoping the announced examination by authorities of broker commissions will actually be a win for the industry, highlighting unfair practices such as commission clawbacks.

“You have done your job and got paid for your effort – why should your money be taken away 12 months or more down the track?” asks the FBAA’s Peter White.

This raises the option of industry-wide adoption of a fee-for-service model.

Yet this idea remains a contentious one.

“I say to my brokers all the time; if you were to take your car to your mechanic and ask them to look at it and tell you what’s wrong, then you go away and decide whether you fix it yourself or get them to do it, they would charge you for that initial consultation. So there’s no reason why a broker shouldn’t take the same approach,” says Gerald Foley of nMB.

“Brokers could say, ‘There is a cost for me to impart my knowledge and experience, however if you do proceed with me, I won’t charge you for that; if you do pay a fee and then proceed with me, I will refund it’. I think a lot of brokers will go that way and that’s fine.”

Others are quick to denounce that fee-for-service should, or will, become the norm.

“The industry has worked hard to really position itself at parity with our lenders, that consumers now know and can trust that there won’t be a pricing disadvantage at all between a lender’s first party or a lender’s third-party channel,” explains Michael Russell.

“If consumers become aware that there is a fee for service that will be paid if you want to see a mortgage broker, I think that can only lead to a decline in broker usage.”

Remember why you’re a broker

No matter what changes happen in the broking space, there is one fundamental that will always remain – the need for your clients to obtain reliable information.

As industry veteran Vernon Spencer sums up very succinctly, brokers now and will continue to play a critical role in the Australian property space.

“Whilst no one is entitled to anything in this world, it is a very important social issue that people have the opportunity to obtain their own home and to pay for it with reasonable terms and conditions,” Mr Spencer says.

ADVICE TO THE NEXT GEN:

"You need to reinvent yourself every five to seven years, otherwise you just become stale.” Kim Cannon, Firstmac.

“Be fully involved at understanding the industry and be ready to embrace change, because it will happen.” Kathy Cummings, formerly CBA.

“Work hard, be diligent, manage your time, build relationships and love what you do.” John Flavell, Mortgage Choice.

“This is a contact sport: you’re not going to be a successful broker by sitting behind a desk, either in an office or a home-based office. You’ve just got to be out there, confident in who you are and what you offer, and talk to as many people as you can.” Gerald Foley, nMB.

“Don’t let the traditional view trap you into being what a typical broker has always done in the past; let yourself think about the future and be involved in shaping the future.” Matt Lawler, Yellow Brick Road.

“Be prepared to use the IT correctly, think outside the box as far as products go and don’t just want to sell a mortgage.” Kevin Matthews, AFG.

“It’s one thing having a great attitude; it is another thing to follow it up with great service, and that is the ticket to the ball game. This is a long game, a game where for the first year or two it will be tough. But it will become the best industry you’ve ever known.” James Symond, Aussie.

“You have to be really passionate about what you do; have an incredible work ethic and just be resilient, because if you put in the effort, you will be rewarded.” Michael Russell, MoneyQuest.

“If you can focus on doing the key things right and persevere through some of the hard times, great things happen.” Sam White, Loan Market.