1. Kevin Wheatley, Bayside Residential and Commercial Mortgages

This year’s top commercial broker is a well-deserved winner, having made his way up the list over the years and jumping from third place last year. Kevin Wheatley, director of Sydney-based Bayside Residential and Commercial Mortgages, is writing some big figures.

Originally a logistician and working with projects like shipping port facilities, he found there was a high component of procurement and saw it as a natural step to start offering a finance service. And “the rest is history”, he says.

Still providing logistics support globally, Wheatley writes deals for hotel construction, residential construction and commercial funding, putting financial structures together and raising the capital to ensure the structures are funded and completed. At one point he lived in Vietnam for four years as he put together financial structures for three major waste recycling stations, raising $200 million out of Singapore.

The move from logistics into finance is one of the best decisions he’s ever made, he says. “I have never looked back and I have managed to maintain the same work effervescence today as I did when I made the conscious decision to move across.”

Working with high end clients has not meant Wheatley escaped the difficulties of the past 18 months. He has seen a very difficult finance environment.

“Anyone that says it’s been easy really isn’t writing a lot of business,” he says. “We’re working twice as hard as we have ever done but that’s to be expected.”

But Wheatley says this is where a broker’s knowledge and background can earn the respect of clients who come to them for support. “When you’re in this environment and institutions have tightened monetary policy, this is where you have really got to apply yourself and look at where alternative funding streams can come from.”

To do this, Wheatley has about 80 lenders on his panel made up of mainstream banks, non-banks, foreign investment banks, annuity funds and private funders. Over the past six months, around 80% of his funds have come from private funding or non-banks.

Wheatley has not made the active decision to avoid major banks; in fact he thinks the current environment is one where brokers need to strengthen their relationships with mainstream banks and work within their policies and guidelines.

“We can’t go beating up the banks because of the policy changes and regulation changes,” he says. “If you can put a deal together with the mainstream bank, great. But if they don’t have an appetite for the business we’re trying to introduce to them to, then we have no option but to go to second tier funders.”

For Wheatley a lot of his business is offshore, with a huge amount of success in south east Asia, but also in the middle east. He also uses a lot of offshore funders and annuity funds, which have big appetite for big infrastructure programs like toll road centres, shopping centres or ports facilities.

For him, he is confident of the Australian market looking forward and believes there will be much more stability after the election dust has settled. In terms of broking, he says he still bounces out of bed every morning. But he does urge the industry to unite and get behind the industry bodies.

“Whether you’re a member of the MFAA or the FBAA this is a time that we have to take a united front to ensure the future of the third party channel,” he says. “The industry needs to get in and support the changes. Maintain solidarity and work as a united front. The industry doesn’t ask for it, it demands it.”

Total value of commercial loan settlements: $234,775,128
Number of commercial loans settled: 23
Average commercial loan size: $10,207,614
Years as a commercial broker: 11
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