A word from Lendi Group
We know that brokers wear many hats – broker, marketer, business manager, all at once.
We also know that that brokers have a lot to navigate as the lending landscape and customer expectations continually evolve. Therefore, it’s important for us to be able to provide brokers with scalable systems and processes and high-quality support so they can drive efficiency and productivity and build scale in their business.
Ultimately, we see Platform Plus as the vehicle to helping our brokers become CEO of their own businesses.
To hire, or not to hire – that is the question. It’s particularly the case for brokers with teetering piles of work in their to-do trays, calendars that are almost completely full, inboxes stuffed with emails that can’t wait until tomorrow, and not nearly enough hours in the day to get everything done.
Nowadays, most brokerages have at least two loan writers in-house (according to the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia’s [MFAA] Industry Intelligence Service report for the six-month period from October 2022 to March 2023, but nearly half (45 per cent) still run as sole operators.
However, more and more brokers are looking at bringing on staff to help out with the growing workload and support clients in their borrowing journey. But given the broking industry relies on relationships and the bonds of trust between brokers and their clients, hiring another staff member can be easier said than done.
The challenge isn’t so much hiring as it is getting these new hires up to the point where they’re helping a business grow. And that’s what brokers should be thinking about – finding the right people, providing development pathways, and utilising technology, so the loan writers can get off the tools and focus on the work that really moves the needle.
Team effort
Danny Blair is one broker who has seen the value of bringing in people to free up time for bigger-picture tasks. In four years, Blair, who started at Aussie Home Loans’ original retail store in Sunnybank, Queensland, has gone from operating one franchise to five.
Blair’s franchises are located less than an hour from each other and he operates to a set schedule, allocating days to each location. To do this, Blair built a team that now comprises three franchise partners, 17 brokers, and five administrative staff.
In a short amount of time, Blair has gone from being the high-volume loan writer at the business to a position more akin to a CEO, focused on nurturing staff and building scale. But none of this would have been possible without the right hires.
“I think the time restraints and the requirements with responsible lending and even the customer requirements, I just don’t see how you can do it by yourself anymore and provide the level of customer service when your customers want to deal with you,” Blair tells The Adviser’s Elite Broker podcast.
“Having a team environment gives us flexibility.”
Changing roles
Bringing in admin and support level staff to help manage a broker’s workload certainly isn’t new to broking. What’s new is the requirements of these staff, according to Lendi Group general manager, network development Aaron Hockey.
“We still continue to see brokers hire staff in traditional admin and personal assistant roles,” Hockey says.
“However, as the demands of broking and customer expectations have evolved, so too has the scope of these support roles, and we now see many support staff taking on responsibilities beyond loan administration, including lead nurturing, community engagement, social media, and local area marketing.”
Many support- and admin-style roles now offer career development opportunities.
“The majority of our Aussie retail stores also have at least one team member employed in an administration and client service capacity,” Hockey says, with just over 10 per cent of Aussie mobile network employing an admin or personal assistant.
“Many of our franchisees offer admin roles as a development pathway into mortgage broking, and over the past 12 months, over 20 store admins have ultimately transitioned into full-time broking roles.”
However, given the cost burden of supporting a full-time staff member, many brokers are looking at taking on support on a file-by-file basis or tapping into centralised support from their aggregator.
Indeed, Lendi Group now offers a Platform Plus support model, which marries the benefits of the group’s proprietary tech system Platform with centralised support. It does so through the use of associates, who contact and pre-qualify customer leads and book appointments directly into broker’s diaries, and the client solutions team, who provide loan fulfilment support all the way through to settlement.
“Since the implementation of Platform Plus, our brokers are achieving speed to submission in excess of four times faster than industry average,” Hockey says, noting that Lendi Group home loan specialists are now able to submit a deal day.
“With the significant reduction in admin, our brokers are able to direct their attention to dollar productive activities like meeting with customers and building referral partnerships,” he says, adding that the model enables brokers to able to “meet with more customers and drive scale in their business without having to commit additional time, increased fixed costs or pay for labour”.
“We see Platform Plus as the vehicle to reaching the deal-a-day milestone in our Aussie retail channel as well. Platform Plus will allow our franchisees to pivot from broker to business leader – building scale by working on their business instead of in it, adding more brokers to their teams, mentoring their brokers to achieve success, and ultimately becoming the CEO of their own business.”
Blair says this has been a godsend for his businesses, telling The Adviser: “They do all that pre-work that, in the past, either the admin or the broker would have been doing, just so the broker can concentrate on the actual conversation with the customer…
“I think that’s been the key to me being able to grow as being able to partner with really good people and also provide them with a career opportunity, not only to be a broker in one of my stores but to be a business partner with me and take that next step.”
Top tips before hiring staff
- Consider the business’s readiness to scale before onboarding new team members and striking the right balance. Moving too early may compromise profitability more than necessary and moving too late may mean operations become too busy to effectively onboard and train new staff.
- Understand the business’s value proposition first, so you can attract candidates who are compatible.
- Have clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and success indicators for positions you may want to fill, so you can nurture that team member effectively and achieve targeted outcomes.
