Headquarters:
27/360 Collins St, Melbourne, VIC 3000
Year founded:
2009
Number of employees:
50
Phone:
1300 254 228
Email:
enquiries@alic.com.au
Website:
alic.com.au
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/company/australian-lending-&-investment-centre
"We are constantly living by our core values: integrity, impact and teamwork"
Julie Giraldi,
CAAT Pension Plan
Read on
IB Top Brokerages
Award Winner
SHIELDED INSURANCE BROKERS
Award Winner
AUSTRALIAN LENDING & INVESTMENT CENTRE
Damian Brander
Managing Director
Mark Davis
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Kevin Agent
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Leadership
Damian Brander’s intimate understanding of business from the inside is helpful in understanding what other SMEs need from him and the banking sector. Damian is passionate about small and large businesses and how to help them grow to their full potential. His executive leadership in banking, along with strategic process design, business acumen and thoughtful people leadership style, has led him to consistently build high-performing businesses, resulting in extraordinary success.
Managing Director
Damian Brander
Mark Davis’s successful career at ANZ has enabled him to become the number one national mortgage lender for seven years in a row. His expertise is in lending structures and strategies for wealth creation and the formula utilised within ALIC.
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Mark Davis
Kevin Agent is a respected leader in the finance industry and considered one of the most experienced mortgage brokers in Australia. Prior to co-founding ALIC in 2009, he worked for a major bank for 23 years in various leadership roles, including business banking, audit and risk management, giving him a wealth of experience and expertise. Of his 13 years as a mortgage broker, Kevin has spent 10 years in MPA’s Top Brokers list.
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Kevin Agent
SPECIAL REPORT
Home
Bio
“We are constantly living by our core values: integrity, impact and teamwork”
Julie Giraldi,
CAAT Pension Plan
“Now, we have much more frequent recognition awards because we want to celebrate people staying at CAAT and recognize the contributions that they bring to the organization”
Julie Giraldi,
CAAT Pension Plan
Read on
Award Winner
AUSTRALIAN LENDING & INVESTMENT CENTRE
Jess Grozdanovski
Team Leader, Customer Liaison
Mark Davis
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Damian Brander
Managing Director
Leadership
Headquarters:
27/360 Collins St, Melbourne, VIC 3000
Year founded:
2009
Number of employees:
50
Phone:
1300 254 228
Email:
enquiries@alic.com.au
Website:
alic.com.au
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/company/australian-lending-&-investment-centre
Damian Brander’s intimate understanding of business from the inside is helpful in understanding what other SMEs need from him and the banking sector. Damian is passionate about small and large businesses and how to help them grow to their full potential. His executive leadership in banking, along with strategic process design, business acumen and thoughtful people leadership style, has led him to consistently build high-performing businesses, resulting in extraordinary success.
Managing Director
Damian Brander
Mark Davis’s successful career at ANZ has enabled him to become the number one national mortgage lender for seven years in a row. His expertise is in lending structures and strategies for wealth creation and the formula utilised within ALIC.
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Mark Davis
Jess Grozdanovski has over 10 years of experience in administration, including financial services, general administration, and settlements. She is responsible for leading the company’s customer liaison and settlements team, which focuses on supporting customers with their application to settlement journey.
Team Leader, Customer Liaison
Jess Grozdanovski
SPECIAL REPORT
Home
Bio
For the second year running, Shielded Insurance Brokers has claimed the number-one spot among IB’s Top Brokerages. In 2020, it was record-setting growth that drove the company’s impressive success. This year, says managing director Stuart Brady, the key ingredient behind the win is the Shielded culture. Brady is proud of the shared vision for constant improvement across all aspects of the business. “We are thrilled to take out the win again, and it’s hats off to the team for their hard work over the past year,” he says.
“Now, we have much more frequent recognition awards because we want to celebrate people staying at CAAT and recognize the contributions that they bring to the organization”
Julie Giraldi,
CAAT Pension Plan
“We are constantly living by our core values: integrity, impact and teamwork”
Julie Giraldi,
CAAT Pension Plan
Read on
Award Winner
AUSTRALIAN LENDING & INVESTMENT CENTRE
Cindy Martel
Vice President,
Finance
Mark Davis
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Damian Brander
Managing Director
Leadership
Headquarters:
27/360 Collins St, Melbourne, VIC 3000
Year founded:
2009
Number of employees:
50
Phone:
1300 254 228
Email:
enquiries@alic.com.au
Website:
alic.com.au
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/company/australian-lending-&-investment-centre
SPECIAL REPORT
Home
Bio
Damian Brander’s intimate understanding of business from the inside is helpful in understanding what other SMEs need from him and the banking sector. Damian is passionate about small and large businesses and how to help them grow to their full potential. His executive leadership in banking, along with strategic process design, business acumen and thoughtful people leadership style, has led him to consistently build high-performing businesses, resulting in extraordinary success.
Managing Director
Damian Brander
Mark Davis’s successful career at ANZ has enabled him to become the number one national mortgage lender for seven years in a row. His expertise is in lending structures and strategies for wealth creation and the formula utilised within ALIC.
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Mark Davis
Jess Grozdanovski has over 10 years of experience in administration, including financial services, general administration, and settlements. She is responsible for leading the company’s customer liaison and settlements team, which focuses on supporting customers with their application to settlement journey.
Team Leader, Customer Liaison
Jess Grozdanovski
For the second year running, Shielded Insurance Brokers has claimed the number-one spot among IB’s Top Brokerages. In 2020, it was record-setting growth that drove the company’s impressive success. This year, says managing director Stuart Brady, the key ingredient behind the win is the Shielded culture. Brady is proud of the shared vision for constant improvement across all aspects of the business. “We are thrilled to take out the win again, and it’s hats off to the team for their hard work over the past year,” he says.
Jess Grozdanovski
Team Leader, Customer Liaison
Jess Grozdanovski has over 10 years of experience in administration, including financial services, general administration, and settlements. She is responsible for leading the company’s customer liaison and settlements team, which focuses on supporting customers with their application to settlement journey.
Team Leader, Customer Liaison
Jess Grozdanovski
Kevin Agent
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Kevin Agent is a respected leader in the finance industry and considered one of the most experienced mortgage brokers in Australia. Prior to co-founding ALIC in 2009, he worked for a major bank for 23 years in various leadership roles, including business banking, audit and risk management, giving him a wealth of experience and expertise. Of his 13 years as a mortgage broker, Kevin has spent 10 years in MPA’s Top Brokers list.
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Kevin Agent
Kevin Agent
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Kevin Agent is a respected leader in the finance industry and considered one of the most experienced mortgage brokers in Australia. Prior to co-founding ALIC in 2009, he worked for a major bank for 23 years in various leadership roles, including business banking, audit and risk management, giving him a wealth of experience and expertise. Of his 13 years as a mortgage broker, Kevin has spent 10 years in MPA’s Top Brokers list.
Principal Investment Lending Manager
Kevin Agent
Cindy Martel
Vice President, Finance
Cindy Martel earned her CMA (CPA) designation in 1995, and gained extensive experience while working in the private sector, fulfilling various leadership roles in the areas of finance and human resources. She joined the Fillmore Construction team in 2014 as controller and progressed into her current role as VP of finance in 2021.
Vice President, Finance
Cindy Martel
Cindy Martel
Vice President,
Finance
Cindy Martel earned her CMA (CPA) designation in 1995, and gained extensive experience while working in the private sector, fulfilling various leadership roles in the areas of finance and human resources. She joined the Fillmore Construction team in 2014 as controller and progressed into her current role as VP of finance in 2021.
Vice President, Finance
Cindy Martel
Jess Grozdanovski
Team Leader, Customer Liaison
Cindy Martel earned her CMA (CPA) designation in 1995, and gained extensive experience while working in the private sector, fulfilling various leadership roles in the areas of finance and human resources. She joined the Fillmore Construction team in 2014 as controller and progressed into her current role as VP of finance in 2021.
Vice President, Finance
Cindy Martel
Anybody walking into the old Australian Lending & Investment Centre (ALIC) offices at the beginning of the pandemic would have noticed a wall of giant walk-in filing cabinets taking up much of the floor space.
Finding information about a client involved locating it on a shelf in a time-consuming, limited-access, cumbersome system that required people to be physically present.
“We pretty much got that down to a paperless environment in a record time of two to three months,” says managing director Damian Brander.
The information that was stored on those moving stacks has been digitised and is now accessible to all team members online. The dividends of this change show the clear benefits that embracing innovation can have on bottom lines for operators in the mortgage business.
They include a doubling in the size of the offshore team, the opening of a second ALIC office in Brisbane, plans to open further offices in such places as Parramatta, the eastern suburbs or CBD of Sydney and Victoria, and clearing over $1bn in gross settled loans during calendar year 2021.
“It’s a huge uplift in revenue, in the cost-efficiency model, in the overall bottom line,” says Brander.
ALIC is also launching a major marketing campaign and brand redesign as it contemplates a strategy for the national stage in the hopes of extending its reach from 14,000 to over 300,000 potential customers.
“Now we’ve actually got the opportunity to expand our footprint,” he says.
“Because of our centralized support model, we can largely put brokers in any location around the country and be supported by our offshore model.”
Of course, bringing in the new centralized data bank of client information required training brokers on how to use it properly, much of which needed to be done remotely as staff worked at home. Like many other firms, ALIC found that the time savings generated through having better access to key client information could be used to create more appointments and revenue-generating activities.
Brander says that there was no shortage of demand in 2021 from existing clients as people sought to upgrade or add extra office space to their dwellings. Property markets in Melbourne and Sydney were hot, but ALIC also captured business from regional Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland as it starts to build up infrastructure ahead of the 2032 Olympics.
“Now, we have much more frequent recognition awards because we want to celebrate people staying at CAAT and recognize the contributions that they bring to the organization”
Julie Giraldi,
CAAT Pension Plan
Brent Fillmore
Founder
Cody Woolf
Director, Health, Safety and Environment
Karen Bannister, CM
Vice President, Marketing
Sarah M Stewart
Associate Vice President,
Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Fillmore Construction was founded by Brent Fillmore in 1991. He was looking to start his own small construction business and the opportunity presented itself with many repeat client relationships. Through lessons learned from 13 years of managing projects, developing business and holding various VP roles with his previous employer, Brent formulated his own approach to running his company. He knew that the key to success was based on relationships and bringing repeated value to them. He was dedicated to the idea that one does not need hundreds of clients and instead must focus on ensuring that a smaller pool of clients was given the best service possible. With over 40 years of construction management experience Brent has remarkable expertise in nearly every facet of the construction industry.
Founder
Brent Fillmore
Cody Woolf joined the Fillmore team in 2011 and holds the title director of health, safety and environment. He is a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP). He also has extensive safety experience and background in criminal justice, which provides a depth of experience for the implementation of Fillmore Construction’s health and safety program. Cody is responsible for creating a positive and safe work environment and strives to promote safety as not only a policy but a lifestyle. He has initiated and implements a range of health, safety and environmental features that have been of critical importance to the overall safety objectives, operations, and profitability of Fillmore Construction. The results of his impact are evident in the positive statistical results and policies that have been developed since he joined the company and the emphasis on safety program development.
Director, Health, Safety and Environment
Cody Woolf
Karen Bannister has over 20 years of marketing expertise and has a Chartered Marketer designation from the Canadian Marketing Association. She is a strategic marketing leader with a career record of success in developing and executing effective marketing strategies, growing revenue, and overseeing multi-talented teams. She also holds five certifications for marketing and brand management.
Karen has successfully completed the Mini-MBA, Essentials of Management program at Schulich School of Business, and most recently completed the Communications and Leadership Program at The Ivey Academy.
Vice President, Marketing
Karen Bannister, CM
Sarah M Stewart has more than 15 years of strategic leasing and customer care experience in residential property management. She is responsible for overseeing all aspects of Centurion’s national leasing platforms, residential lead generation, and overall customer experience excellence through operation of the company’s internal customer service department.
Associate Vice President, Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Sarah M Stewart
Brent Fillmore
Cody Woolf
Sarah M Stewart
Associate Vice President, Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Karen Bannister, CM
Vice President, Marketing
Cody Woolf
Director, Health, Safety and Environment
Fillmore Construction was founded by Brent Fillmore in 1991. He was looking to start his own small construction business and the opportunity presented itself with many repeat client relationships. Through lessons learned from 13 years of managing projects, developing business and holding various VP roles with his previous employer, Brent formulated his own approach to running his company. He knew that the key to success was based on relationships and bringing repeated value to them. He was dedicated to the idea that one does not need hundreds of clients and instead must focus on ensuring that a smaller pool of clients was given the best service possible. With over 40 years of construction management experience Brent has remarkable expertise in nearly every facet of the construction industry.
Founder
Brent Fillmore
Cody Woolf joined the Fillmore team in 2011 and holds the title director of health, safety and environment. He is a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP). He also has extensive safety experience and background in criminal justice, which provides a depth of experience for the implementation of Fillmore Construction’s health and safety program. Cody is responsible for creating a positive and safe work environment and strives to promote safety as not only a policy but a lifestyle. He has initiated and implements a range of health, safety and environmental features that have been of critical importance to the overall safety objectives, operations, and profitability of Fillmore Construction. The results of his impact are evident in the positive statistical results and policies that have been developed since he joined the company and the emphasis on safety program development.
Director, Health, Safety and Environment
Cody Woolf
Karen Bannister has over 20 years of marketing expertise and has a Chartered Marketer designation from the Canadian Marketing Association. She is a strategic marketing leader with a career record of success in developing and executing effective marketing strategies, growing revenue, and overseeing multi-talented teams. She also holds five certifications for marketing and brand management.
Karen has successfully completed the Mini-MBA, Essentials of Management program at Schulich
School of Business, and most recently completed the Communications and Leadership Program at
The Ivey Academy.
Vice President, Marketing
Karen Bannister, CM
Sarah M Stewart has more than 15 years of strategic leasing and customer care experience in residential property management. She is responsible for overseeing all aspects of Centurion’s national leasing platforms, residential lead generation, and overall customer experience excellence through operation of the company’s internal customer service department.
Associate Vice President, Leasing and
Call Centre Operations
Sarah M Stewart
Brent Fillmore
Founder
Karen Bannister, CM
Vice President, Marketing
Cody Woolf
Director, Health,
Safety and Environment
Sarah M Stewart
Associate
Vice President, Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Fillmore Construction was founded by Brent Fillmore in 1991. He was looking to start his own small construction business and the opportunity presented itself with many repeat client relationships. Through lessons learned from 13 years of managing projects, developing business and holding various VP roles with his previous employer, Brent formulated his own approach to running his company. He knew that the key to success was based on relationships and bringing repeated value to them. He was dedicated to the idea that one does not need hundreds of clients and instead must focus on ensuring that a smaller pool of clients was given the best service possible. With over 40 years of construction management experience Brent has remarkable expertise in nearly every facet of the construction industry.
Founder
Brent Fillmore
Cody Woolf joined the Fillmore team in 2011 and holds the title director of health, safety and environment. He is a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP). He also has extensive safety experience and background in criminal justice, which provides a depth of experience for the implementation of Fillmore Construction’s health and safety program. Cody is responsible for creating a positive and safe work environment and strives to promote safety as not only a policy but a lifestyle. He has initiated and implements a range of health, safety and environmental features that have been of critical importance to the overall safety objectives, operations, and profitability of Fillmore Construction. The results of his impact are evident in the positive statistical results and policies that have been developed since he joined the company and the emphasis on safety program development.
Director, Health, Safety and Environment
Cody Woolf
Karen Bannister has over 20 years of marketing expertise and has a Chartered Marketer designation from the Canadian Marketing Association. She is a strategic marketing leader with a career record of success in developing and executing effective marketing strategies, growing revenue, and overseeing multi-talented teams. She also holds five certifications for marketing and brand management.
Karen has successfully completed the
Mini-MBA, Essentials of Management program at Schulich School of Business, and most recently completed the Communications and Leadership Program at The Ivey Academy.
Vice President, Marketing
Karen Bannister, CM
Sarah M Stewart has more than 15 years
of strategic leasing and customer care experience in residential property management. She is responsible for overseeing all aspects of Centurion’s national leasing platforms, residential lead generation, and overall customer experience excellence through operation
of the company’s internal customer
service department.
Associate Vice President,
Leasing and Call Centre Operations
Sarah M Stewart
“The value chain that supported all the brokers was geared up in a way to move through all the volume that was created and efficiently deliver.”
ALIC is also spreading the dividends of its innovation success beyond the immediate business. It recently signed an agreement with the WLTH platform committing to cleaning up 50 square metres of ocean or beachfront for every new loan signed.
Pushing brand awareness around such initiatives and digitalisation will be a key focus in the next 12 months, says Brander.
One of the advantages of rapidly expanding after overhauling the technical side of the business is that the large numbers of new employees can be trained immediately in using the most up-to-date systems.
ALIC prides itself on the level of client detail stored within its system which tags customers with everything from risk level to sporting interests so that team members can have an immediate understanding of every client’s needs and traits.
While some of the steam is now coming off the property market, Brander says that the rising interest rate environment will create a wave of refinancing that will buoy business in the months ahead.
“We’ll see a big spike and uplift with that over the next six months... people want to review and make sure they got the best rate,” he says.
Further tech innovation is also in the works as the market adjusts to the new environment
with a decision engine upgrade mid-year that would allow live approvals of loans for some clients.
With multiple offices around the country and a lender-agnostic approach, ALIC has helped investors and home buyers take out over $6.39bn in loans since it was founded in 2009. The Centre’s vision is to be a trusted mortgage advisor that ethically enables clients to create wealth through investment.