Q. What does your process look like?

Supported by offshore help

I have a team that helps me, offshore. I use a third-party company that’s based here in Australia and it’s their team, but I’ve got two full-time employees that work for me. I am in the process of trying to get them to do a bit more of that for me, but currently they do everything after the client meeting. They process all my deals and do some follow-up for me.

Once I’ve got the documentation and made my recommendations – and assuming the client’s comfortable with them and wants to proceed – they basically take over from there until submission.

I do tell clients about them, but they don’t actually have any interaction with them. They really just interact with me and I interact with my client directly.

Ben Walker
First Finance Solutions

Different people for the front and back ends

We, effectively, split the process in two. The first part of the process – when it comes to the gathering of information with the client, deciding on their loan structure, their loan option, and then, as a result, picking their best lender – I generally focus on. Once we’ve picked the lender, that’s when Elijah [Barrett] comes into play [to] look after them from submission all the way through to settlement.

We didn’t really think too much about how we were going to do it. It actually just gravitated towards that way.

I’ve got the front end and he’s a bit more numbers-focused. However, we are making sure that we’re both exposed, right at the beginning, rather than just handing it over.

Lucas Barrett
Mortgage Choice Sandringham

Keeping it low touch for clients

We try and keep turnaround times down at acceptable levels, so we try to keep the documentation as low friction as possible. So, our process is really, really strictly catered to that.

Pilots [our client base] are busy, they’re all over the place. So being able to do remote appointments is our preference. We do most, if not all, of our appointments on Zoom or Teams.

We run to a strict process. And because we’re so familiar with the industrial agreements, how the pay slips all work (and there are multiple variations within these [aviation] companies), we do so much of it because we just know it best.

Rick Garner
Crew Financial

Doing the hard stuff first

I focus on my high mental load tasks in the morning, when I’m at my sharpest. I like to get up and do a run early in the morning and then I’m feeling really good. So I’ll smash out those more difficult tasks in the morning that take a little bit more mental load and then the back end of the day will be tasks that are a bit less demanding on the brain. But, you know, every day is different!

Being a new broker, I’ll take a meeting late in the day or early in the morning. I don’t have sections that I block off. While I might quarantine my diary off for different things at different times, but I’m pretty flexible at the moment in that regard.

Mitch Bath
The Lending Alliance