It's smart to ask

Aussie’s executive chairman John Symond has a voice that is as synonymous with the home loan industry as meat pies are with Australia.

That voice may have gone on sabbatical for five years, but it’s now back, both on radio and television, with Mr Symond heading up Aussie’s latest advertising campaign.

The new campaign, which uses the slogan ‘It’s smart to ask’, has already proven incredibly successful and the brokerage recorded a 41 per cent jump in its number of leads in February.

The spike in enquiries meant Aussie was able to write approximately $1.5 billion in new residential loans that month through its 750 accredited brokers.

“We knew the new advertising campaign had to be a little different,” Symond says, “so we decided to abandon my most notorious catch phrase, ‘I’ll save you’, and replace it with something that is more befitting of the current environment.”

According to Mr Symond, the old catch phrase often confused a lot of borrowers and led them to believe they should only call Aussie if they had been rejected by other lenders.

“While this wasn’t the case at all, it is definitely something that our advertising slogan was inadvertently implying,” he says.

“A lot of people had the mentality that if they didn’t qualify for a normal loan, they could go to Aussie. But that is not what Aussie is all about. We decided to tread new ground and launch a new catch phrase.”

‘It’s smart to ask’ ultimately caters to a “higher demographic”, Mr Symond says.

“People don’t need saving anymore. When I first launched this business, I knew there was a way I could help home owners save up to three per cent on their mortgage. Today, the home loan market is a lot more competitive. I can’t save them three per cent. What’s more, borrowers don’t need saving.

“Today, they need and crave home loan advice. With so many competitive options out there, it is hard for borrowers to know which lender to use. This is where Aussie comes in.”

According to Mr Symond, Aussie is not about spruiking or selling a product; rather, the brokerage aims to help people understand what they need to do in their individual financial situation.

Aussie recently erected billboards across Sydney that asked the question, ‘Would your bank recommend a better home loan from a competitor?’

“It is these kinds of messages that really make borrowers think and successfully highlight exactly what we can do for them,” Mr Symond says.

“When times are tough and the economic environment is uncertain, people look at their financial affairs and say, ‘I’d better do something’. So our timing was great. Thanks to the ongoing uncertainty around interest rates, consumers really embraced the message.”

The early years

‘Aussie John’ knows how to market both himself and his company.

He can read the market like a book, knowing exactly which messages need to be delivered and when.

While many might attribute his success to his 20-plus years’ experience in the mortgage space, John Symond’s innate entrepreneurial spirit cannot be overlooked.

In fact, it is this entrepreneurial spirit that brought him to the home loan industry in the first place.

Brought up in a working-class Australian family, Mr Symond showed his business acumen early on, developing apartment blocks with his cousin while studying at university.

But while he is obviously ambitious by nature, he has not sailed through life smoothly.

In the 1980s, Mr Symond set up a financial advisory business, focusing on property. He went into partnership with a fully-owned subsidiary of the State Bank of South Australia, which was owned by the South Australian Government.

The bank then went broke and Mr Symond faced bankruptcy.

However, the news wasn’t all bad and as the saying goes, ‘through adversity, innovation is born’.

While staring down the bankruptcy barrel, Mr Symond came up with a way to make it easier for mums and dads not only to get into home ownership but to be able to afford it.

The banks, which at the time were seeing a 400 to 500 per cent profit margin over the cost of funds for housing, were challenged by Mr Symond and his new venture.

In 1992, Aussie Home Loans was born and the rest, as they say, is history.

But how did the near-bankrupt Sydneysider get money to lend?

According to Mr Symond, the Primary Industry Bank of Australia gave him his first big break and allowed him to really hit his stride in the mortgage space.

By 1994, Macquarie was also on board and Mr Symond was helping mums and dads save 300 basis points, or three per cent off their mortgage.

A few years later, RAMS was born and so was a whole industry of mortgage broking.

Onwards and upwards

Since those early days, Aussie has gone from strength to strength.

The company is, arguably, responsible for bringing competition to the Australian home lending industry, forcing banks to drop their interest rates and improve service levels.

Aussie was also responsible for introducing securitisation to home loans, also resulting in lower interest rates.

Today, Aussie is one of the nation’s leading brokerage groups, with a loan portfolio that surpasses $36 billion and a product suite that boasts mortgages and credit cards.

And recently, the brokerage entered the wholesale aggregation space for the first time. On 3 April 2012, Aussie announced it had bought boutique aggregator National Mortgage Brokers (nMB) for an undisclosed sum.

Mr Symond says the purchase was a good one for Aussie – and it would be the first of many. Aussie plans to “aggressively” grow its wholesale aggregation footprint over the coming years, he says.

“We know that 70 per cent of broker-originated mortgages are written through the wholesale aggregation space – a market we have not played in until now,” he says.

“We have been looking at this space for a few years and we have decided that now is the right time to grow our footprint in this space. We believe acquisitions such as nMB will complement our existing business-to-consumer model.

“By entering the wholesale aggregation space, [we can] touch a lot more customers and distribute a lot more of our products, not just mortgages.”

Mr Symond says the company hopes to grow its distribution from just under 200 brokers in the wholesale aggregation space today, to more than 2,000 brokers down the track.

“We will take on quality groups by acquisition. We plan to grow aggressively and quickly in this space,” he adds. “It is a big market out there and we are determined to be the biggest and most influential player.”

Whether or not Mr Symond’s goal of being the biggest and best in the business comes to fruition remains to be seen. For now, one thing is clear: Aussie John’s entrepreneurial spirit, iconic brand and respect within the industry will continue to leave him well positioned for business growth.