Chris Slater joins broker investment business

It does this by taking a controlling stake (typically 51 per cent) in the broking business and providing resources and consulting services with the owners/teams to “rapidly increase revenue, profit, and value growth”.

Slater will join the company in May and will be tasked with selectively partnering with high-performance brokerages and driving long-term business value.

The new head of strategic growth has 30 years of experience in the broking industry, having held a range of senior management positions at aggregator Australian Finance Group (AFG) over a 17-year career, including as head of sales and distribution and CEO of the asset finance aggregation brand Fintelligence.

Slater has also been a board member of Mortgage Advice Bureau Australia, a national group manager for aggregation group Astute Financial, and was a relationship manager at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) for seven years.

Prior to his finance career, Slater was a journalist for a range of companies and publications, including the Queensland Soccer Federation, The Sunday Mail, and ABC Radio.

Announcing the new hire, Recludo Group CEO Tim Brown welcomed Slater’s vast experience in strategic execution and “passion for broker success”, suggesting he would further strengthen the group’s expertise and reinforce its vision of empowering brokers to build “profitable, future-ready businesses”.

Speaking to The Adviser, Brown added: “Chris and I have known each other through the industry for a number of years. When Chris resigned from AFG, I couldn’t think of anybody better to have as part of the executive team than him.

“I think Chris likes what we’re doing and feels, like me, that it’s the right time, right place, to start running the Recludo strategy in the broking industry.”

Slater said he looks forward to “jumping on board in May and continuing [his] passion of working with mortgage brokers, helping them grow their business, and collaborating with like-minded people”.

Speaking to The Adviser, he said: “I’ve spent two decades working with brokers, helping them build their business at both aggregators I’ve worked for (AFG and Astute). But I think it’s getting tougher as the industry’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and, no doubt, a lot more competitive at the aggregator level. It’s just getting tougher to provide the tailored support that some firms need.

“One of the things I really like about what Recludo is doing is analysing a business and looking at building a strategy on maximising the value of their business.

“So, I’ll be focused on helping grow the footprint and getting out and trying to find businesses for us to invest in, while also providing some of the strategy around what we offer our brokers to support them and help them grow their business.”

He concluded: “The reality is the broker market has a huge footprint across the country, and there’s plenty of opportunity for Recludo to make a real difference – which is what I’m excited about.”

Who is Recludo?

Recludo was launched last year by Tim Brown (industry director and a former CEO of Vow Financial and head of broker at Macquarie), broker coach Ash Playsted (formerly of Broker Ideas Group), Jon Corney (a financial services consultant and former Vow Financial CFO) and Tom Roche (formerly the CIO of succession planning specialists TrailBlazer Finance).

Since launching in mid-2024, the company has completed two transactions totalling $1.5 million in two broking businesses (one of which involved merging two other businesses into it) and is expected to settle another $2 million investment imminently.

It particularly targets established brokerages – those that typically have more than $300 million in funds under management – that want to scale up quickly (with Recludo looking to grow a business by three or four times its value).

Brown said: “We see the industry evolving, and it’s maturing … we see the value in starting to scale some of those businesses as people start to leave.

“I think running a single owner-operated business probably isn’t possible anymore. That’s due to a number of reasons, including compliance regulation, administrative costs, all those sorts of things. So we’re really looking to invest in businesses that we think can scale up quickly.”

He added that the idea was to ensure that a broker’s business could run without them while growing the value of the business as an asset.

“We are looking to build a succession plan for some brokers. For some, they want us to come in and invest and build the business so they can exit in five years.

“But this isn’t happening overnight. We’re taking these broker principals on a journey over 6-12 months. For many, they need to get their head around losing legal control while they run the business. And we want them to continue to run it because we believe what they’re doing is running a very good business. We just want to bring in that expertise to take it to the next level,” Brown said.

Slater said: “There are so many brokers I’ve spoken to in the last 12 months who are thinking about how they can protect, grow, and realise the value of their business, with a focus on succession and what an exit might look like.”

“One of the challenges many business owners have is getting themselves off the tool and putting a team in place to help the business run without them.

“At the same time, there’s a wave of young entrepreneurs entering the industry, bringing a fresh perspective to the opportunity. The Recludo methodology is a perfect fit for many of those business owners.”

“It’s almost like having your own advisory board, but we’re part owners, and we’re in there with them, helping them combine their strengths and our strengths together to get a better result.”

While Recludo’s initial capital was raised by Hall Chadwick, the company also expects future capital may come from a range of family offices and institutional investors, as well as, potentially, broking groups.

[Related: The future of mortgage broking: Why succession planning matters more than ever]