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Renee Poppett has been a Liberty adviser for Brisbane for three years now and in that time she’s moved from specialising in just commercial finance — to offering a wide range of finance options.
“My background has always been in commercial lending — but when I joined the LNS Network it was because I wanted to explore additional revenue streams and really grow my business to the next level,” Ms Poppett said.
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“The best thing about commercial lending is that it teaches you to not tick boxes — you need to think more laterally about each transaction because there are more outcomes or variants involved in the loan. It means you stop thinking rigidly and start to be more flexible.
“Already having that mindset made it a pretty easy transition to working with Liberty — because Liberty takes that same approach right across its lending portfolio,” she added.
As a result, she now has a varied portfolio of customers covering a range of financial products including motor finance, residential and insurance.
“When there’s been a drop off in commercial lending, it’s good to know there are other services we can sell to keep things turning over.
“We are seeing a lot of self-employed clients buying residential property at the moment, either as owner-occupiers or investors. Some of them need a low doc product as they only have a year’s worth of earnings on record — so we’ve been able to help them realise their property ownership goals,” she said.
At the same time, Renee sees a recurring trend of residential customers returning 12 months after settling to investigate finance for a new car.
“Once customers have bought the house the next thing they’ll think about is a car. It’s so easy to be able to run them through a range of Liberty motor finance options as soon as they call,” she said.
However, being able to sell more services doesn’t mean Renee no longer lends in the commercial space. In fact, her work with small businesses still accounts for a large portion of the loans she writes, especially for self-employed truck drivers.
“We get a lot of drivers who earn really good salaries — but because they are so busy from the day they start their business, they often don’t have the documentation in order and need help structuring their finance.
“One example that comes to mind is a self-employed worker that has ended up bringing in repeat work. Our relationship with them started with a small lease for a new compressor, then a new hoist for their workshop followed shortly afterwards. Since then we’ve been able to help them with three home loans and even consolidate credit card and tax debts. When the family home needed structural repairs, we were able to refinance the mortgage to free up some cash to cover that as well. The client has been really happy with how flexible we’ve been,” she explained.
