Fight For Mortgage Broker Hearts And Minds
It’s a universally acknowledged truth that mortgage broking works largely through push marketing.
So while there are some strong brands, good advertising and effective systems across the market, mortgage groups really rely on the brokers themselves to do the selling.
This means true success for mortgage broking businesses involves waging a war in the search for talent, whereby attracting and then retaining the best brokers is the key to success.
brandmanagement recently embarked on a study aimed at understanding what makes mortgage brokers happy, how happy they are with their existing employer and what, if anything, would make them consider changing employers.
The report revealed an industry more stable than expected, with only 3.5% of those covered in the study stating they were ‘definitely’ seeking a new business to represent.
42% indicated they were more than happy, with the remainder pointing to being happy enough, but could move elsewhere if a better offer came along.
It was no surprise to find that the most attractive thing about any mortgage broker was how well they were paid – but it was something of a surprise to find that software and tools were more important to them than new lead generation.
And while bad pay was the thing most likely to make them leave a group – the second biggest potential driver to them leaving was corporate culture – closely followed by software and tools.
According to the more than 700 brokers covered in the study – the perception was that the Top of The Pops for remuneration were Bluestone, Liberty and Pepper Home Loans (closely shadowed by Westpac, GE and BankWest).
Meanwhile the best for tools and software were ANZ, Plan and Westpac, closely followed by St. George, Commonwealth and then Bluestone.
Indeed the study revealed an industry which is still struggling to make its offer clear to mortgage brokers
The Best of the Best from the mortgage Brokers perspective were:
Best Brand The Commonwealth
Best Products The Commonwealth
Best Payers Bluestone
Best Leads Mortgage Choice
Best Culture Bank West
Doug says:
Hi cas, if you have any deals you can’t write send them to me. Its pretty grim round my way that moment.
Doug
cas says:
Hi doug, if you read my comments properly I never said anything about Aussie or Rams and Wizard are not being a broker!!
I said majority of the survey institutions are not brokers. If you want me to precisely out 36 institution that have participate on only a handful run a brokering arm. And for your info yes Aussi, Rams, and Wizard are consider to be in that handful as brokering companies. The reserch report Andew is on your website which I am sure you have a copy of it too. Doug mate! I burningpants did not send me a copy I just happen to read this article and found the report on their website where I had a look to see how this research was done. can send you a report as well if you can give me your email address.
Any how this will be my last two cents worth of comment about this survey, have to start writing some deals.
Andrew says:
Hi Doug,
No we didn’t supply cas with a copy of the questions and the survey is no longer active, so not sure where that is coming from, I think he means from the summary which is on this website.
Yes you may have a copy of the larger report summary – please email me at info@brandmanagement.com.au and I will forward you a copy.
But I think Cas’s point has some merit – while the report in question segments the results into independent brokers and those operating through a channel, its a pretty tricky area. Its all very well to say that that just because someone works for ANZ they are not a salesman but a broker..In a recent mystery shop we completed where we took more than 100 Australians through the process of actually getting a home loan from start to getting the money we found some interesting things. For example that if we went through Aussie we only got Aussie product – that of the seven deals that were done via brokers who worked with AFG, we got seven ANZ deals (who by the way absolutely dominated the sales process).
And just for interests sake – the fastest deal done was a $500k plus loan for an adjoining property which a RAMS broker sold and ANZ product and from the first meeting to money being in the account was 72 hours.
The average time from first meeting to money being in the account was just shy of a month.
Steve says:
Just to to a spanner in the works CAS – my names Steve and I work for ANZ as a mortgage broker. I sell ANZ products but I can also sell other products. ANZ can pretty much satisfy all the needs that customers have, in the two years I have been with them, I haven’t sold anyone else’s products, but it doesn’t mean that I am not a broker. Doug the guys that you are referring to are mobile lenders, not salesmen. Im pretty sure that CBA have a broker style arm too – not many but sitting in suburban shopping centres some branded CBA and some not. I think NAB are consiering it as well. I used to work through AFG but stopped, there’s no money in it. I also don’t think this is what the report is about – I think its about what products people who sell home loans brokers if you like) like to sell and who they want to work for – so the definition of broker might be a bit irrlevant.
Doug says:
I don’t know Cas is or who he works for but he seems to have his head firmly in the sand over who is providing what service to whom. On his reckoning the people who work for Aussie, Wizard, Rams are not brokers – which may come as something of a surprise to them. I work as a broker for a branded channel and sell as muh as I can our products – because I am better rewarded for doing so. Under Cas’s description that doesn’t make me a broker. Frankly Cas, you don’t know what you are talking about, almost all the banks that have been mentioned allow their staff to sell non bank branded products where they can’t meet the offer. Almost all of the branded brokers have the same policy – sell what we like where you can and then whatever you like where we can’t match the offer.
By CAS’s definition only brokers who work for aggregators are “true” brokers. That mate would come as a surpise to most of the industry.
Its good that the burning pants guys gave you the questions and the sample to look at though – congrats to them on being so open about their research. As far as | know mate there is no such this as a broking busines ( not a brokering business by the way – take the time to hit spell check or grammar check – type it into word first and paste it in if like me your english is poor) which doesn’t display a preference in the loans that they write.
Also fyi Cas, the CBA and ANZ guys get a mixture of salary and commission depending on what their roles are. The salesmen get salary and a commission mix, the brokers I understand get a combination of trail and upfront commission.
However, that said you seem to imply in your comment that burningpants gave you the questions and answers to review – if thats true can I also have a copy?
cas says:
Hi guys, in reply to Andrew’s comment I would like to say that I do agree with Meljay Doug. CBA & ANZ thrid party division do have guys that is structure similar to a broker, in a sense that they are not paid by salary but commission like a broker. But pls note that these guys are not brokers as there product are bias to the brands they are working under. True brokers as Andrew would put it is one that is not limited to just one to two branding. If what andrew is saying is true that CBA & ANZ is running a broker with no limited of products to just CBA and ANZ than tell what it is? Maybe I can join them instead of joining a aggregator group like AFG etc. If any of the major instution is running a brokering arm as such than trust me I would know about it.
Andrew I had a look at your survey questions and the institution that participate in the survey how many of those 30 somthing institution runs a mortgage brokering arm? I didn’t know bankwest had a brokering arm, many of the other institution would be surprisethat they even had a brokering arm after reading this article. Maybe I can ask kathy Cummings head of CBA third party about this brokering arm that CBA is claimming they have. Like I stated earlier this survey is not properly done.
Doug says:
Just a comment on Meljay’s post – mate keep up – the banks do have BDM’s but for the past three years both ANZ and CBA have been offering broking services in Sydney and on the Gold coast and soon in Melbourne.
Some of these guys are branded by the Banks some aren’t – the CBA has a really complex model, ANZ’s a bit more straight forward – but the point is that they are into the space – they aren’t so much selling their products but their systems.
Meljay says:
Andrew, I’d like to follow up on your comment about banks employing mortgage brokers. I am a self employed broker who used to work for a bank and can categorically confirm that banks don’t employ brokers. They employ mobile lenders who only offer their products. Some banks have stakes in aggregators such as AFG but they don’t have true brokers. A broker is someone who offers loan products from a range of lenders. Sure, CBA will swing an application over to Bluestone if they can’t write it themselves, but that’s not mortgage broking. The majority of people who work for banks in the broker space are BDMs, whose job is to extract business from brokers (i.e. the ones who are out there meeting the clients). Or do you know something we don’t???
Andrew says:
Hi Cas,
Thanks for your comments – perhaps I should explain. We do a great deal of work in the mortgage broking industry for the MFAA and for various companies in the industry, so we havea pretty good insight into the strucutre of the industry ( that said we would always like it to be better – so welcome any comments).
You have to consider if someone working for one of the branded broker channels, Wizard, Aussie, etc etc is a Mortgage Broker as well as those who work completely independently consider themselves a broker. Are you implying that because they work for a franchise that they are not a broker?
You Also seem to be implying that ANZ don’t have mortgage brokers ( they do – in fact they have some of the countries best) as do CBA and many of the other banks those people are not lenders or banks sales staff they are Mortgage Brokers.
Many mortgage brokers have employers – all the franchises “employ” mortgage brokers and many of the banks “employ” mortgage brokers – the point of the article is that success for these businesses is based on the number of high quality brokers that they can either attrract to work for them as a badged broker or attract to write their products as loans.
So in the research we identified if the brokers were employed by a franchise or if they were independent. If they were employed by a franchise we asked them how happy they were, which products they liked to write for full service, low docs etc etc etc, which ones they liked but didn’t or were prevent from writing etc etc.
We did the same for the people who were independent. Obviously if they are independent, they couldn’t comment on their satisfaction with their employer, but could comment on the type and nature of the loans they wrote.
I hope that clears it up.
cas says:
I think the report and survey are very misleading to the readers as the research was not conducted with mortgage brokering company but with the product providers and aggregator companies. How can you get a true view point from a broker if the research was not done with brokers. Therefore I think this research need to be properly research first with a good knowledge of how the brokering industry is structure before an article like this is publish.
cas says:
was reading your article, regarding to the research that has been done.
It seems the research that was conducted was supposetly done on the mortgage broker market.
But reading your article I was a bit confuse on who the researh was conducted on and what the outcome was supposed to be?
Was the mortgage brokers the researhc was conducted on working for the companies mentioned? e.g bluestone, ANZ, westpac,bankwest etc?
The only company in the article that was mention is a mortgage company was mortgage choice.
The rest the companies are not mortgage brokering company but a product supplier to the brokers?
So was the research done on Business development managers that represent these product suppliers or was it done on “Mortgage Brokers”?
The article talke about how happy mortgage brokers are with their employer but then it went to talking about what product suppliers the mortgage broker company was happy with.
Maybe I am reading it wrong but I did not understand who this article was aiming at.
please advise
Andrew says:
The survey was to to Australian brokers – the question simply asked them to rate each of the providers in Australia in terms of product quality and CBA was ranked the best, just beating ANZ and St George.
To be honest we do hundreds of mystery shopping events every year in the mortgage broking space working through mortgage brokers, and bankers and all the data we have gathred in the past 12 months suggests that’s a fair reflection of what is happening in the market, by volume and satisfaction as well.
Ask more questions.... says:
Best Products The Commonwealth??
Are there other brokers out there that may raise an eyebrow here???
How truly independant was this survey?