ELITE BROKER

Elite Broker: Broking with AI

Julian Fayad, LoanOptions.ai

We sit down with the founder of finance brokerage LoanOptions.ai Julian Fayad, to find out how he married his web development and app development skills with his passion for finance

Q. How and why did you become a broker?

I was studying website and app development full-time and working full-time and I was struggling to keep up. At the time, I needed to help my mum, a single mother of five kids, so I dropped my studies.

I accidentally landed in my second choice career, which was in asset finance in an automotive dealership. I went from being a junior broker to a broker, then a senior broker to a group finance manager, and then a training manager.

LoanOptions.ai started just under four years ago. I got the opportunity to start my own business after COVID-19 and I haven’t looked back.

Q. What does LoanOptions.ai do?

It harnesses data-driven property technology to pre-approve customers with competitive car loans, personal loans, business loans, and asset financing from its panel of lenders. And as well as having its own in-house brokers, it also supports the asset finance needs of many resi brokers now, too, which has seen the company fund over $200 million in loans since its launch four years ago, with over half of that done in the last two years.

Q. How did you transition from broker to fintech CEO?

The most difficult part was having to explain to a client who’s been dealing with me for 10 years that I’m going to do a handover. I did it softly, I didn’t just say, “No, I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”

I started to introduce [other brokers] as my support. Clients trust you for very specific parts of the process. They know that anyone can collect documents and anyone can follow up. They’re not really worried about that part. What they want to know is, “Are you going to get me approved?”

So [I would] pass off [the client to another broker] and then once it’s ready for submission, I would get involved and negotiate the approval with the lender and make sure that everything goes smoothly. And over time, they became accustomed to the rest of the team members.

" You should speak to people who have done it before and pick their brains

Q. How do you incorporate AI into your business model?

We use AI across a number of different technologies. We use historical data and scenarios of clients to predict the probability of approval. That’s the core functionality of what AI does in our business. So, we have hundreds of thousands of scenarios that get run.

We have 75 banks and lenders. How does the client navigate that? If there are five or six options that are available to them, how do they know which one to pick? Because they all might have similar features and benefits. So [our] AI is looking at around 100 data points that include their employment classification, their credit score, the age of their credit file, how many inquiries they’ve had in the last three months, [and] even their banking conduct.

Q. How do you go about hiring staff?

A lot of businesses put ads on SEEK, but we’ve taken a very different approach. Hiring for us is sales and marketing. Our LinkedIn presence is attracting people to our business. My DMs every single week, without fail, have people [messaging] me saying, “Can I join the team? Have you got this type of role?” Those people are usually of a higher calibre because they’re not just scrolling on SEEK at 3am.

BDMs are also a good resource to get references from.

But the most important thing is that once you have them in front of you, you need to score them so you can do the hiring process objectively and remove any bias.

Q. What are your top tips for new brokers?

If you’re looking to start your own brokerage, you should speak to people who have done it before and pick their brains. Have a chat, ask questions, and don’t be embarrassed or shy. Talk to not just one aggregator, talk to all of them and see what’s going to be a good fit for you. Align yourself with the right people.

I would say the right way to do it is not to go out on your own at first. Go and cut your teeth in one or more brokerages and find brokerages that are similar to the way that you want to run an operation. Go and learn, go and ask questions.

" You should speak to people who have done it before and pick their brains