Natasha Choi of The Australian Lending & Investment Centre is part of this year's Mortgage Professional Australia magazine's Young Guns list
NATASHA CHOI, 26
The Australian Lending & Investment Centre
Melbourne, Vic / Connective
$46,131,223
In a multi-Australian Mortgage Award winning brokerage, with Top 100 heavyweights such as Mark Davis and Kevin Agent, standing out as a broker – while still in your mid-20s – is an enormous challenge. Yet if anyone was ready for that challenge, it was Natasha Choi. Choi bought her first property at the age of 22; by 25 her investment portfolio was worth $2.4m. When she first met Davis it was as a client and, leaving her high-flying job in institutional banking, she then became a broker.
“I wanted to have an impact on people’s lives” is how Choi explains her move. Yet even for an experienced investor and banking high-achiever, the induction program at The Australian Lending & Investment Centre was “very, very intense”, involving an 18-month stint as Davis’s deputy. Nevertheless, Choi believes her background as an investor gave her an advantage: “You look at a lot of people in the finance industry and they don’t necessarily practise what they preach.”
That effort is being recognised: ALIC managing director Jason Back told MPA that “Natasha is a clear standout in a male-led industry where bravado and posturing can be rewarded over content and positioning.” Choi is mindful that, while more women are succeeding in banking, many are reluctant to move into broking. “I want to represent the women in the industry; show that ‘hey you can do it’.” What separates broking from the corporate world, Choi explains, is that “you’re making a change to someone’s life. I’d work on multimillion and billion companies, and in an environment where deal flow is quite limited, mergers and acquisitions are quite limited, everyone’s life goes on.”
The Australian Lending & Investment Centre
Melbourne, Vic / Connective
$46,131,223
In a multi-Australian Mortgage Award winning brokerage, with Top 100 heavyweights such as Mark Davis and Kevin Agent, standing out as a broker – while still in your mid-20s – is an enormous challenge. Yet if anyone was ready for that challenge, it was Natasha Choi. Choi bought her first property at the age of 22; by 25 her investment portfolio was worth $2.4m. When she first met Davis it was as a client and, leaving her high-flying job in institutional banking, she then became a broker.
“I wanted to have an impact on people’s lives” is how Choi explains her move. Yet even for an experienced investor and banking high-achiever, the induction program at The Australian Lending & Investment Centre was “very, very intense”, involving an 18-month stint as Davis’s deputy. Nevertheless, Choi believes her background as an investor gave her an advantage: “You look at a lot of people in the finance industry and they don’t necessarily practise what they preach.”
That effort is being recognised: ALIC managing director Jason Back told MPA that “Natasha is a clear standout in a male-led industry where bravado and posturing can be rewarded over content and positioning.” Choi is mindful that, while more women are succeeding in banking, many are reluctant to move into broking. “I want to represent the women in the industry; show that ‘hey you can do it’.” What separates broking from the corporate world, Choi explains, is that “you’re making a change to someone’s life. I’d work on multimillion and billion companies, and in an environment where deal flow is quite limited, mergers and acquisitions are quite limited, everyone’s life goes on.”
