Prioritising your resources

Obviously, activities such as promoting client retention and administration are extremely important – indeed, without them a business will fail – but according to Jess de Araugo, marketing manager at Connective, many of these low paying activities can actually be outsourced.

“There are simply not enough hours in the day to conduct interviews, chase valuations, speak to lenders and contact clients on a regular basis,” Ms de Araugo says.

Marketing and promotion

Connective introduced the group’s ‘My Marketing’ service precisely to address this challenge and in an effort to help brokers save time on client follow-ups and offer an after-care service, she explains.

Within the My Marketing service, brokers can pick from three different options on offer: the Bronze, Silver and Gold packages.

“We understand that all brokers are different, so it’s not right to have a ‘one size fits all’ marketing approach,” says Ms de Araugo. The different packages therefore offer different level of assistance with ‘low paying activities’.

“In our Bronze package, we will send ‘Happy Birthday’ texts to their clients on [the broker’s] behalf as well as monthly Reserve Bank rate announcements to every client in their CRM,” she says.

The Silver service includes a monthly e-magazine that they can distribute to their clients. The Gold package offers everything in the Silver package plus access to press release templates and use of the ‘Connective Social’ program.

This program allows brokers to outsource their social media responsibilities. “Connective will tweet, post Facebook updates and even update a broker’s LinkedIn on their behalf,” says Ms de Araugo.

The My Marketing campaign is fully integrated into the broker’s CRM, meaning Connective knows exactly whom the broker wants contacted and in which way. “Brokers can pick and choose which clients receive which touch points,” she says.

There is, of course, no point in outsourcing if there is no significant return on the investment, but Ms de Araugo says My Marketing has been paying dividends for those that use it.

“We have seen an uplift in settlements from those engaging with the campaign,” she says.

Loan processing

Vision Aggregation can also help brokers with their day-to-day activities, according to group principal Matt Ivers. The aggregator offers loan processing services to brokers as a way of freeing them up for more important roles.

Outsourcing helps financial performance, according to Mr Ivers: “Those who outsource generate better bottom line results,” he says. “We help them focus on high paying activities which makes good business sense.”

Vision helps brokers take a client loan from original engagement right through to settlement. “We can help brokers chase clients for additional information, chase lenders for loan approvals, chase valuers for valuations and so on,” Mr Ivers says.

Like Connective’s My Marketing program, Vision’s loan processing service is fully integrated into the broker’s CRM. This means the aggregator doesn’t need to ask brokers pointless questions before taking over the processing of the loan, Mr Ivers explains.

“Brokers can meet with the client and enter their details into the CRM system. From there, we can pretty much take care of the rest,” he says.

According to Mr Ivers, outsourcing loan processing can save brokers valuable time.

“Often, brokers can be left on hold with lenders for hours as they wait to check on their status of a loan. By outsourcing their loan processing to us, they don’t have to suffer through this. Instead, they can simply update the client on the status of their loan as and when we update them,” he says.

Staying in control

Brian Cleverdon of Centennial Group says loan processing specialists are able to take a loan to settlement more efficiently than a broker could. His firm has a fully-qualified loan processing team that can manage loan applications right up to settlement.

“The broker would often have to come back at night and check through emails but we are in contact with lenders throughout the day and we believe that we can actually offer a more effective service in getting loans settled and approved,” he says.

For most brokers, the main fear about outsourcing a loan application process is losing control of the application and losing the ability to track the loan.

Mr Cleverdon says he understands this fear: “We make sure that we contact the brokers every day or at milestones such as conditional approval, valuation and then obviously full approval too.

“In some cases we are in contact with a broker more than once a day,” he adds.

Dalibor Ivkovic says his loan processing business, XSource, offers brokers several back-office services.

“We offer brokers web and design services and a 24-hour call centre too,” he says. According to Mr Ivkovic, it’s all about saving brokers time to focus on what they are good at.

“We find the majority of brokers are excellent salespeople, but we take care of what they might find a bit more mundane like data entry and following up and we do it very professionally and efficiently,” he says.

“We estimate that our services save brokers between six to eight hours per deal.”

Time and money

There can, of course, be significant financial benefits to outsourcing. “Some of the bigger firms basically outsource their entire back office to us and we are finding they are probably paying half the price that they would be paying if they had their own team,” Mr Ivkovic says.

Paul Irwin from LJ Hooker Home Loans Hills District (greater Sydney) is currently outsourcing his loan processing to XSource and says the service saves him valuable time.

“Per loan, I’d probably save at least a couple of hours,” he says.

According to Mr Irwin, XSource have the expertise and structures in place to handle loan processing more effectively than he could as a single broker.

“We’re brokers: we’re great at deal structuring, we’re great at finding solutions for our clients but we’re not IT people, and I’m not trained in clerical work,” he says.

Outsourcing can also offer individual brokers more flexibility to manage their expenses more effectively.

“If you can afford $50K a year to put on a PA, then good luck to you, but if you can’t and you’re looking for an alternative with a flexible structure then outsourcing is great — if you don’t use it, you don’t pay,” says Mr Irwin.

“If you don’t write any business this month you’re not going to get a bill from them, but if you are going to write a lot of business you have people there to support you and back you up,” he adds.

Most importantly, Mr Irwin says outsourcing his loan processing has been good for his bottom line.

“I had someone working for me and was paying upwards of $3,000 per month. I can tell you I can now get a lot more loans processed for that.”