Shifting the balance
Pandemic-related disruption has counterintuitively made doing business easier for mortgage brokers in some respects, as momentum in the property market and broker industry continues to usher in new practices and norms
Anthony Waldron
Mortgage Choice
Industry experts
Jane Vaughan
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
Leah Nugent
Smartline Hills District
Anthony Waldron was appointed interim CEO of Mortgage Choice in February 2022, following the resignation of Susan Mitchell. Prior to this, he was advising REA’s Financial Services business on growth initiatives. Waldron was previously an executive at NAB for 12 years.
Mortgage Choice
Anthony Waldron
Jane Vaughan joined Mortgage Choice in May 2007 after finishing a 20-year career at Qantas. She is the sole broker in her franchise and is looking to recruit additional staff over the next few months. Her business is self-sufficient based on client referrals.
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
Jane Vaughan
George Boustani joined Mortgage Choice as a broker in 2001 and stepped up to franchise owner in December 2018. As a relatively new business owner, Boustani has flourished, collecting four awards at the 2021 Mortgage Choice Stronger Together National Conference for achieving the highest settlements in numbers for a new owner; highest settlements in dollars for a new owner; highest group office conversions; and highest group office conversions for a new owner.
Mortgage Choice Penshurst
George Boustani
Leah Nugent migrated to Australia from Scotland in 2001. She later held various roles at PMI Indemnity, FAST and Mortgage Choice. Always a supporter of brokers in the third party space, Nugent decided to join Smartline in 2018 as a franchise owner and forge her own path. Her office is based in the Hills District of Sydney, and she has recently been commended for her work within the network, receiving the 2022 Smartline NSW Marketing Champion award. She is a wife and mum with "three amazing daughters".
Smartline Hills District
Leah Nugent
The good news is that, to date, pandemic-related disruption has counterintuitively made doing business easier in some ways, as property market and broker industry momentum continues to usher in new practices and norms that will lift the sector overall – even if it won’t all be plain sailing.
How important is technology in your role? What have been the main technology changes in your business over the last 12 months, and where is the industry heading next?
“As terrible as COVID is, I think it has revolutionised the interaction between the loan writer and the customer,” said George Boustani. “The experience is now far better. It's been a blessing in disguise, there's no doubt about that.”
He said it was almost unfathomable that two years ago clients could not sign mortgage documents electronically, but the pandemic saw lenders and aggregators make it happen.
“The Mortgage Choice Broker Platform also allows us to give our clients a portal to upload their documents, meaning they don’t need to photocopy or print or email,” Boustani said.
Leah Nugent, Smartline Hills District
How does Mortgage Choice support you as a franchise owner, especially in terms of lead generation and marketing resources?
Jane Vaughan said the best tool by far for winning business was developing relationships and generating word-of-mouth recommendations.
“I can't stress how important it is to build your relationships. Quality leads are the ones that come from somebody who's referred you and had a positive experience with you in the past.”
Vaughan said providing quality service to customers could generate strong Google reviews and create a beneficial feedback loop – bringing in more business from outside a broker’s immediate network.
Jane Vaughan,
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
The residential property market remains buoyant even though house price growth is easing slightly in some states. Many commentators believe the RBA will lift its cash rate in the second half of 2022. What types of conversations with your clients is this generating?
Australians are slowly starting to look forward and put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, but it is important for brokers to keep their eyes on the road ahead.
When it comes to the experience of the broker involved, Boustani pointed out that processes are more time-efficient, appointments are quicker, and compliance has been made easier with more automation to record client interactions.
Leah Nugent agreed. While meetings often tended to drag on in 2019, the introduction of Zoom and other video conferencing apps in the workplace has meant brokers are now having comprehensive client meetings in less than 40 minutes.
Paperwork has also been substantially reduced and time saved by using tools such as DocuSign, which Nugent could not imagine doing without. The reduced carbon emissions and saved trees are an added bonus.
Inertia and resistance to change in the banking industry have washed away in areas such as client identification, as lenders realised that using technologies like DocuSign was the only way business could get done remotely.
Rise in loan commitments by sector
Housing
$33.7bn
Owner-occupier
Investor
“The banks for years said, ‘we cannot possibly do this – there's too much risk’, and the second that COVID hit, all of a sudden we were able to do this,” Nugent said.
Anthony Waldron said technology would continue to open up new markets. The captioning function in Zoom has improved accessibility for people with disabilities, for example.
“It opens up a different suite of customers that have historically been left out of digital interactions.”
But he added that many fundamental technological changes and opportunities were still on the horizon. For him, the major one was open banking.
Open banking would allow customers to share their financial data with accredited third parties, saving brokers time on duplicated paperwork. Brokers would also get access to much richer data.
“Open banking is coming, and it will create all sorts of opportunities. It will further legitimise the relationships and ways of working between third parties, lenders and brokers. The data is going to be there, and no one is more trusted than the broker in that process as they now write more than two thirds of all loans,” Waldron said.
He added that open banking would also have particular benefit for the one in five Australians who are self-employed – a portion of the market sometimes seen as underserved because it is often tougher to verify income or produce tax returns if the business is new.
Read on
For 30 years Mortgage Choice has been at the forefront of Australia’s mortgage broking industry, and under new ownership as part of REA Group, a leading global digital business specialising in property, this doesn’t change. As a network of close to 1,000 brokers and more than 740 franchises nationally, Mortgage Choice remains one of Australia’s most trusted and recognised brands, with over 95% brand confidence among consumers. Mortgage Choice is passionate about helping people afford the things that are important to them, whether that’s buying a home, buying a new car or starting a business.
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“Quality leads are the ones that come from somebody who's referred you and had a positive experience with you in the past”
“Don't be so worried that if rates start to go up by 25 or 50 or 75 points, you can no longer afford to be in your property”
George Boustani
Mortgage Choice Penshurst
THE PANDEMIC changed a lot of things in the lending market, and for franchisees at Mortgage Choice and Smartline the pace of change is not set to slow any time soon.
Mortgage Choice interim CEO Anthony Waldron, Smartline Hills District franchise owner Leah Nugent, Mortgage Choice Haberfield franchise owner Jane Vaughan and Mortgage Choice Penshurst franchise owner George Boustani gathered recently at the Bel & Brio restaurant in Barangaroo, Sydney, to discuss the current industry landscape.
New borrower-accepted loan commitments (seasonally adjusted) – Jan 2022
$22.7bn
$11.0bn
2.6%
18.2%
3.4%
67.8%
1.0%
6.1%
Month-on-month increase
Year-on-year increase
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics January 2022 Lending Indicators
A recent campaign by the Mortgage Choice marketing team to educate franchisees on how to best manage and maintain their Google reviews and Google My Business sites has led to 450 businesses ranking 4.9 stars – a number that has more than doubled since 2020.
Boustani said an attraction for him in terms of marketing support was the ease with which social media could be leveraged, and the amount of pre-approved aggregator content and images that could be quickly posted to platforms like Facebook for monthly marketing campaigns.
“It literally takes me about 15 minutes to market the whole month on Facebook and Instagram, and I don't have to do any research in terms of content.”
This kind of outreach filtered through to Google reviews, he said, likely resulting in hard-to-quantify but significant ROI.
Having robust systems is also important, which is why Vaughan chose Mortgage Choice as a branded aggregator. She said having these systems in place was key to being able to expand an existing network and provide stronger customer experiences.
“My decision to buy the franchise was all about having the right systems and processes and having a turnkey solution.”
From left: Anthony Waldron, Mortgage Choice; Leah Nugent, Smartline Hills District;
George Boustani, Mortgage Choice Penshurst; Jane Vaughan, Mortgage Choice Haberfield
Over the next two to three years, what do you believe will be the greatest challenge for your business and the industry?
Waldron said one trend to watch was recruitment. The increasing number of Australians using mortgage brokers to secure finance had left the industry with the challenge of finding enough staff to handle the work – admittedly not a bad problem to have.
“Recruitment is hard, and franchisees want to attract the right people and keep them in their businesses,” he said.
Source: MFAA quarterly survey
Steady growth in mortgage brokers' market share
“Open banking is coming, and it will create all sorts of opportunities”
Anthony Waldron,
Mortgage Choice
“As terrible as COVID is, I think it has revolutionised the interaction between the loan writer and the customer”
George Boustani, Mortgage Choice Penshurst
Boustani said the possibility of rates rising presented an opportunity to communicate with clients. On top of his regular home loan health checks for clients, he opts into Mortgage Choice’s monthly customer-focused newsletters, which look at what is happening in every state’s property markets, what the RBA is doing, and what the future may look like in terms of interest rates, among other useful content for homebuyers, investors and small business owners.
Nugent agreed, saying it was important to let clients know that many had more leeway to handle higher rates than they realised, because banks tested the viability of loan applications at a higher level than the borrower’s original interest rate.
“Don't be so worried that if rates start to go up by 25 or 50 or 75 points you can no longer afford to be in your property,” she said.
Vaughan noted that there were lenders with better retention pricing, and this was something she included in her discussions with clients when recommending which home loan products would be suitable.
Even so, she said more Australians were seeking to secure a buffer after the black swan events of the past couple of years.
Waldron said the industry was seeing higher savings rates and levels of pre-payment than before the pandemic, which would put those with mortgages in a better position if rates were to rise.
Oct-Dec 2019
Oct-Dec 2020
Oct-Dec 2021
Boustani agreed that the biggest challenge was staffing “and servicing the increasing number of leads moving forward”.
For Vaughan, who is currently recruiting for her business, the role of a franchise development manager (FDM) has never been more important. Her Mortgage Choice FDM is on hand to help work through which roles should be recruited and what should be in the contract. Then there is the intimate support around detailed business decisions and industry issues such as lender turnaround times.
“You don’t need to use this support all the time, but my FDM knows if I reach out, I really do need that support, and they’ve got the contacts to help us,” Vaughan said.
“There is absolute value in having really good FDMs who have good experience and good background knowledge of what we actually do.”
55.3%
59.4%
66.5%
Hover to see values
1
1
2021 Honeycomb REA Service Offering research
Copyright © 2022 Key Media Pty Ltd
For 30 years Mortgage Choice has been at the forefront of Australia’s mortgage broking industry, and under new ownership as part of REA Group, a leading global digital business specialising in property, this doesn’t change. As a network of close to 1,000 brokers and more than 740 franchises nationally, Mortgage Choice remains one of Australia’s most trusted and recognised brands, with over 95% brand confidence among consumers. Mortgage Choice is passionate about helping people afford the things that are important to them, whether that’s buying a home, buying a new car or starting a business.
2021 Honeycomb REA Service Offering research
1
1
Find out more
“You don’t need to use this support all the time, but my FDM knows if I reach out, I really do need that support, and they’ve got the contacts to help us,” Vaughan said.
“There is absolute value in having really good FDMs who have good experience and good background knowledge of what we actually do.”
Boustani agreed that the biggest challenge was staffing “and servicing the increasing number of leads moving forward”.
For Vaughan, who is currently recruiting for her business, the role of a franchise development manager (FDM) has never been more important. Her Mortgage Choice FDM is on hand to help work through which roles should be recruited and what should be in the contract. Then there is the intimate support around detailed business decisions and industry issues such as lender turnaround times.
Over the next two to three years, what do you believe will be the greatest challenge for your business and the industry?
Waldron said one trend to watch was recruitment. The increasing number of Australians using mortgage brokers to secure finance had left the industry with the challenge of finding enough staff to handle the work – admittedly not a bad problem to have.
“Recruitment is hard, and franchisees want to attract the right people and keep them in their businesses,” he said.
Vaughan noted that there were lenders with better retention pricing, and this was something she included in her discussions with clients when recommending which home loan products would be suitable.
Even so, she said more Australians were seeking to secure a buffer after the black swan events of the past couple of years.
Waldron said the industry was seeing higher savings rates and levels of pre-payment than before the pandemic, which would put those with mortgages in a better position if rates were to rise.
Boustani said the possibility of rates rising presented an opportunity to communicate with clients. On top of his regular home loan health checks for clients, he opts into Mortgage Choice’s monthly customer-focused newsletters, which look at what is happening in every state’s property markets, what the RBA is doing, and what the future may look like in terms of interest rates, among other useful content for homebuyers, investors and small business owners.
Nugent agreed, saying it was important to let clients know that many had more leeway to handle higher rates than they realised, because banks tested the viability of loan applications at a higher level than the borrower’s original interest rate.
“Don't be so worried that if rates start to go up by 25 or 50 or 75 points you can no longer afford to be in your property,” she said.
The residential property market remains buoyant even though house price growth is easing slightly in some states. Many commentators believe the RBA will lift its cash rate in the second half of 2022. What types of conversations with your clients is this generating?
Australians are slowly starting to look forward and put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, but it is important for brokers to keep their eyes on the road ahead.
A recent campaign by the Mortgage Choice marketing team to educate franchisees on how to best manage and maintain their Google reviews and Google My Business sites has led to 450 businesses ranking 4.9 stars – a number that has more than doubled since 2020.
Boustani said an attraction for him in terms of marketing support was the ease with which social media could be leveraged, and the amount of pre-approved aggregator content and images that could be quickly posted to platforms like Facebook for monthly marketing campaigns.
“It literally takes me about 15 minutes to market the whole month on Facebook and Instagram, and I don't have to do any research in terms of content.”
This kind of outreach filtered through to Google reviews, he said, likely resulting in hard-to-quantify but significant ROI.
Having robust systems is also important, which is why Vaughan chose Mortgage Choice as a branded aggregator. She said having these systems in place was key to being able to expand an existing network and provide stronger customer experiences.
“My decision to buy the franchise was all about having the right systems and processes and having a turnkey solution.”
How does Mortgage Choice support you as a franchise owner, especially in terms of lead generation and marketing resources?
Jane Vaughan said the best tool by far for winning business was developing relationships and generating word-of-mouth recommendations.
“I can't stress how important it is to build your relationships. Quality leads are the ones that come from somebody who's referred you and had a positive experience with you in the past.”
Vaughan said providing quality service to customers could generate strong Google reviews and create a beneficial feedback loop – bringing in more business from outside a broker’s immediate network.
From left: Anthony Waldron, Mortgage Choice; Leah Nugent, Smartline Hills District;
George Boustani, Mortgage Choice Penshurst; Jane Vaughan, Mortgage Choice Haberfield
“The banks for years said, ‘we cannot possibly do this – there's too much risk’, and the second that COVID hit, all of a sudden we were able to do this,” Nugent said.
Anthony Waldron said technology would continue to open up new markets. The captioning function in Zoom has improved accessibility for people with disabilities, for example.
“It opens up a different suite of customers that have historically been left out of digital interactions.”
But he added that many fundamental technological changes and opportunities were still on the horizon. For him, the major one was open banking.
Open banking would allow customers to share their financial data with accredited third parties, saving brokers time on duplicated paperwork. Brokers would also get access to much richer data.
“Open banking is coming, and it will create all sorts of opportunities. It will further legitimise the relationships and ways of working between third parties, lenders and brokers. The data is going to be there, and no one is more trusted than the broker in that process as they now write more than two thirds of all loans,” Waldron said.
He added that open banking would also have particular benefit for the one in five Australians who are self-employed – a portion of the market sometimes seen as underserved because it is often tougher to verify income or produce tax returns if the business is new.
When it comes to the experience of the broker involved, Boustani pointed out that processes are more time-efficient, appointments are quicker, and compliance has been made easier with more automation to record client interactions.
Leah Nugent agreed. While meetings often tended to drag on in 2019, the introduction of Zoom and other video conferencing apps in the workplace has meant brokers are now having comprehensive client meetings in less than 40 minutes.
Paperwork has also been substantially reduced and time saved by using tools such as DocuSign, which Nugent could not imagine doing without. The reduced carbon emissions and saved trees are an added bonus.
Inertia and resistance to change in the banking industry have washed away in areas such as client identification, as lenders realised that using technologies like DocuSign was the only way business could get done remotely.
The good news is that, to date, pandemic-related disruption has counterintuitively made doing business easier in some ways, as property market and broker industry momentum continues to usher in new practices and norms that will lift the sector overall – even if it won’t all be plain sailing.
How important is technology in your role? What have been the main technology changes in your business over the last 12 months, and where is the industry heading next?
“As terrible as COVID is, I think it has revolutionised the interaction between the loan writer and the customer,” said George Boustani. “The experience is now far better. It's been a blessing in disguise, there's no doubt about that.”
He said it was almost unfathomable that two years ago clients could not sign mortgage documents electronically, but the pandemic saw lenders and aggregators make it happen.
“The Mortgage Choice Broker Platform also allows us to give our clients a portal to upload their documents, meaning they don’t need to photocopy or print or email,” Boustani said.
THE PANDEMIC changed a lot of things in the lending market, and for franchisees at Mortgage Choice and Smartline the pace of change is not set to slow any time soon.
Mortgage Choice interim CEO Anthony Waldron, Smartline Hills District franchise owner Leah Nugent, Mortgage Choice Haberfield franchise owner Jane Vaughan and Mortgage Choice Penshurst franchise owner George Boustani gathered recently at the Bel & Brio restaurant in Barangaroo, Sydney, to discuss the current industry landscape.
Source: MFAA quarterly survey
Oct-Dec 2019
Oct-Dec 2020
Oct-Dec 2021
Steady growth in mortgage brokers' market share
66.5%
59.4%
55.3%
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics January 2022 Lending Indicators
Housing
$33.7bn
2.6%
18.2%
$22.7bn
Owner-occupier
1.0%
3.4%
Investor
$11.0bn
67.8%
6.1%
Year-on-year increase
Month-on-month increase
New borrower-accepted loan commitments (seasonally adjusted) – Jan 2022
Rise in loan commitments by sector
“Don't be so worried that if rates start to go up by 25 or 50 or 75 points, you can no longer afford to be in your property”
Leah Nugent,
Smartline Hills District
“Quality leads are the ones that come from somebody who's referred you and had a positive experience with you in the past”
Jane Vaughan,
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
“As terrible as COVID is, I think it has revolutionised the interaction between the loan writer and the customer”
George Boustani,
Mortgage Choice Penshurst
“Open banking is coming, and it will create all sorts of opportunities”
Anthony Waldron,
Mortgage Choice
Leah Nugent
Smartline Hills District
George Boustani
Mortgage Choice Penshurst
Jane Vaughan
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
Anthony Waldron
Mortgage Choice
Industry experts
Read on
Pandemic-related disruption has counterintuitively made doing business easier for mortgage brokers in some respects, as momentum in the property market and broker industry continues to usher in new practices and norms
Shifting the balance
In Partnership with
Share
News
TV
Updates
Features
Resources
Subscribe
Events
Contact Us
Leah Nugent migrated to Australia from Scotland in 2001. She later held various roles at PMI Indemnity, FAST and Mortgage Choice. Always a supporter of brokers in the third party space, Nugent decided to join Smartline in 2018 as a franchise owner and forge her own path. Her office is based in the Hills District of Sydney, and she has recently been commended for her work within the network, receiving the 2022 Smartline NSW Marketing Champion award. She is a wife and mum with "three amazing daughters".
Smartline Hills District
Leah Nugent
George Boustani joined Mortgage Choice as a broker in 2001 and stepped up to franchise owner in December 2018. As a relatively new business owner, Boustani has flourished, collecting four awards at the 2021 Mortgage Choice Stronger Together National Conference for achieving the highest settlements in numbers for a new owner; highest settlements in dollars for a new owner; highest group office conversions; and highest group office conversions for a new owner.
Mortgage Choice Penshurst
George Boustani
Jane Vaughan joined Mortgage Choice in May 2007 after finishing a 20-year career at Qantas. She is the sole broker in her franchise and is looking to recruit additional staff over the next few months. Her business is self-sufficient based on client referrals.
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
Jane Vaughan
Anthony Waldron was appointed interim CEO of Mortgage Choice in February 2022, following the resignation of Susan Mitchell. Prior to this, he was advising REA’s Financial Services business on growth initiatives. Waldron was previously an executive at NAB for 12 years.
Mortgage Choice
Anthony Waldron
Copyright © 2022 Key Media Pty Ltd
Share
For 30 years Mortgage Choice has been at the forefront of Australia’s mortgage broking industry, and under new ownership as part of REA Group, a leading global digital business specialising in property, this doesn’t change. As a network of close to 1,000 brokers and more than 740 franchises nationally, Mortgage Choice remains one of Australia’s most trusted and recognised brands, with over 95% brand confidence among consumers. Mortgage Choice is passionate about helping people afford the things that are important to them, whether that’s buying a home, buying a new car or starting a business.
2021 Honeycomb REA Service Offering research
1
1
Find out more
“You don’t need to use this support all the time, but my FDM knows if I reach out, I really do need that support, and they’ve got the contacts to help us,” Vaughan said.
“There is absolute value in having really good FDMs who have good experience and good background knowledge of what we actually do.”
Boustani agreed that the biggest challenge was staffing “and servicing the increasing number of leads moving forward”.
For Vaughan, who is currently recruiting for her business, the role of a franchise development manager (FDM) has never been more important. Her Mortgage Choice FDM is on hand to help work through which roles should be recruited and what should be in the contract. Then there is the intimate support around detailed business decisions and industry issues such as lender turnaround times.
Over the next two to three years, what do you believe will be the greatest challenge for your business and the industry?
Waldron said one trend to watch was recruitment. The increasing number of Australians using mortgage brokers to secure finance had left the industry with the challenge of finding enough staff to handle the work – admittedly not a bad problem to have.
“Recruitment is hard, and franchisees want to attract the right people and keep them in their businesses,” he said.
Vaughan noted that there were lenders with better retention pricing, and this was something she included in her discussions with clients when recommending which home loan products would be suitable.
Even so, she said more Australians were seeking to secure a buffer after the black swan events of the past couple of years.
Waldron said the industry was seeing higher savings rates and levels of pre-payment than before the pandemic, which would put those with mortgages in a better position if rates were to rise.
Boustani said the possibility of rates rising presented an opportunity to communicate with clients. On top of his regular home loan health checks for clients, he opts into Mortgage Choice’s monthly customer-focused newsletters, which look at what is happening in every state’s property markets, what the RBA is doing, and what the future may look like in terms of interest rates, among other useful content for homebuyers, investors and small business owners.
Nugent agreed, saying it was important to let clients know that many had more leeway to handle higher rates than they realised, because banks tested the viability of loan applications at a higher level than the borrower’s original interest rate.
“Don't be so worried that if rates start to go up by 25 or 50 or 75 points you can no longer afford to be in your property,” she said.
The residential property market remains buoyant even though house price growth is easing slightly in some states. Many commentators believe the RBA will lift its cash rate in the second half of 2022. What types of conversations with your clients is this generating?
Australians are slowly starting to look forward and put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, but it is important for brokers to keep their eyes on the road ahead.
A recent campaign by the Mortgage Choice marketing team to educate franchisees on how to best manage and maintain their Google reviews and Google My Business sites has led to 450 businesses ranking 4.9 stars – a number that has more than doubled since 2020.
Boustani said an attraction for him in terms of marketing support was the ease with which social media could be leveraged, and the amount of pre-approved aggregator content and images that could be quickly posted to platforms like Facebook for monthly marketing campaigns.
“It literally takes me about 15 minutes to market the whole month on Facebook and Instagram, and I don't have to do any research in terms of content.”
This kind of outreach filtered through to Google reviews, he said, likely resulting in hard-to-quantify but significant ROI.
Having robust systems is also important, which is why Vaughan chose Mortgage Choice as a branded aggregator. She said having these systems in place was key to being able to expand an existing network and provide stronger customer experiences.
“My decision to buy the franchise was all about having the right systems and processes and having a turnkey solution.”
How does Mortgage Choice support you as a franchise owner, especially in terms of lead generation and marketing resources?
Jane Vaughan said the best tool by far for winning business was developing relationships and generating word-of-mouth recommendations.
“I can't stress how important it is to build your relationships. Quality leads are the ones that come from somebody who's referred you and had a positive experience with you in the past.”
Vaughan said providing quality service to customers could generate strong Google reviews and create a beneficial feedback loop – bringing in more business from outside a broker’s immediate network.
From left: Anthony Waldron, Mortgage Choice; Leah Nugent, Smartline Hills District; George Boustani, Mortgage Choice Penshurst; Jane Vaughan, Mortgage Choice Haberfield
“The banks for years said, ‘we cannot possibly do this – there's too much risk’, and the second that COVID hit, all of a sudden we were able to do this,” Nugent said.
Anthony Waldron said technology would continue to open up new markets. The captioning function in Zoom has improved accessibility for people with disabilities, for example.
“It opens up a different suite of customers that have historically been left out of digital interactions.”
But he added that many fundamental technological changes and opportunities were still on the horizon. For him, the major one was open banking.
Open banking would allow customers to share their financial data with accredited third parties, saving brokers time on duplicated paperwork. Brokers would also get access to much richer data.
“Open banking is coming, and it will create all sorts of opportunities. It will further legitimise the relationships and ways of working between third parties, lenders and brokers. The data is going to be there, and no one is more trusted than the broker in that process as they now write more than two thirds of all loans,” Waldron said.
He added that open banking would also have particular benefit for the one in five Australians who are self-employed – a portion of the market sometimes seen as underserved because it is often tougher to verify income or produce tax returns if the business is new.
When it comes to the experience of the broker involved, Boustani pointed out that processes are more time-efficient, appointments are quicker, and compliance has been made easier with more automation to record client interactions.
Leah Nugent agreed. While meetings often tended to drag on in 2019, the introduction of Zoom and other video conferencing apps in the workplace has meant brokers are now having comprehensive client meetings in less than 40 minutes.
Paperwork has also been substantially reduced and time saved by using tools such as DocuSign, which Nugent could not imagine doing without. The reduced carbon emissions and saved trees are an added bonus.
Inertia and resistance to change in the banking industry have washed away in areas such as client identification, as lenders realised that using technologies like DocuSign was the only way business could get done remotely.
The good news is that, to date, pandemic-related disruption has counterintuitively made doing business easier in some ways, as property market and broker industry momentum continues to usher in new practices and norms that will lift the sector overall – even if it won’t all be plain sailing.
How important is technology in your role? What have been the main technology changes in your business over the last 12 months, and where is the industry heading next?
“As terrible as COVID is, I think it has revolutionised the interaction between the loan writer and the customer,” said George Boustani. “The experience is now far better. It's been a blessing in disguise, there's no doubt about that.”
He said it was almost unfathomable that two years ago clients could not sign mortgage documents electronically, but the pandemic saw lenders and aggregators make it happen.
“The Mortgage Choice Broker Platform also allows us to give our clients a portal to upload their documents, meaning they don’t need to photocopy or print or email,” Boustani said.
THE PANDEMIC changed a lot of things in the lending market, and for franchisees at Mortgage Choice and Smartline the pace of change is not set to slow any time soon.
Mortgage Choice interim CEO Anthony Waldron, Smartline Hills District franchise owner Leah Nugent, Mortgage Choice Haberfield franchise owner Jane Vaughan and Mortgage Choice Penshurst franchise owner George Boustani gathered recently at the Bel & Brio restaurant in Barangaroo, Sydney, to discuss the current industry landscape.
Source: MFAA quarterly survey
Oct-Dec 2019
Oct-Dec 2020
Oct-Dec 2021
Steady growth in mortgage brokers' market share
66.5%
59.4%
55.3%
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics January 2022 Lending Indicators
Housing
$33.7bn
2.6%
18.2%
$22.7bn
Owner-occupier
1.0%
3.4%
Investor
$11.0bn
67.8%
6.1%
Year-on-year increase
Month-on-month increase
New borrower-accepted loan commitments (seasonally adjusted) – Jan 2022
Rise in loan commitments by sector
“Don't be so worried that if rates start to go up by 25 or 50 or 75 points, you can no longer afford to be in your property”
Leah Nugent,
Smartline Hills District
“Quality leads are the ones that come from somebody who's referred you and had a positive experience with you in the past”
Jane Vaughan,
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
“As terrible as COVID is, I think it has revolutionised the interaction between the loan writer and the customer”
George Boustani,
Mortgage Choice Penshurst
“Open banking is coming, and it will create all sorts of opportunities”
Anthony Waldron,
Mortgage Choice
Leah Nugent
Smartline Hills District
George Boustani
Mortgage Choice Penshurst
Jane Vaughan
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
Anthony Waldron
Mortgage Choice
Industry experts
Pandemic-related disruption has counterintuitively made doing business easier for mortgage brokers in some respects, as momentum in the property market and broker industry continues to usher in new practices and norms
Shifting the balance
Read on
In Partnership with
Leah Nugent migrated to Australia from Scotland in 2001. She later held various roles at PMI Indemnity, FAST and Mortgage Choice. Always a supporter of brokers in the third party space, Nugent decided to join Smartline in 2018 as a franchise owner and forge her own path. Her office is based in the Hills District of Sydney, and she has recently been commended for her work within the network, receiving the 2022 Smartline NSW Marketing Champion award. She is a wife and mum with "three amazing daughters".
Smartline Hills District
Leah Nugent
George Boustani joined Mortgage Choice as a broker in 2001 and stepped up to franchise owner in December 2018. As a relatively new business owner, Boustani has flourished, collecting four awards at the 2021 Mortgage Choice Stronger Together National Conference for achieving the highest settlements in numbers for a new owner; highest settlements in dollars for a new owner; highest group office conversions; and highest group office conversions for a new owner.
iMortgage Choice Penshurst
George Boustani
Jane Vaughan joined Mortgage Choice in May 2007 after finishing a 20-year career at Qantas. She is the sole broker in her franchise and is looking to recruit additional staff over the next few months. Her business is self-sufficient based on client referrals.
Mortgage Choice Haberfield
Jane Vaughan
Anthony Waldron was appointed interim CEO of Mortgage Choice in February 2022, following the resignation of Susan Mitchell. Prior to this, he was advising REA’s Financial Services business on growth initiatives. Waldron was previously an executive at NAB for 12 years.
Mortgage Choice
Anthony Waldron
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