Despite a skills shortage in the industry, there are ways to expand your team, says broker business head
According to Mortgage Choice CEO Susan Mitchell, the current property market presents a unique opportunity for brokers to upscale their businesses and bring on more staff. But while this is one of the biggest opportunities in the current market, it is also one of the biggest challenges, she said.
“First of all, you need to find the talent, secondly you need to train them and then thirdly you need to have that time to invest in a new staff member,” she told MPA.
Finding talent is indeed a massive barrier to the process. Award-winning broker Louisa Sanghera of Zippy Financial recently told MPA that a lack of suitable candidates for the broker support roles she had advertised had left her understaffed and unable to take on all the work that was coming through the door.
Read more: What’s forcing brokers to turn away business?
Mitchell shared two strategic tips for brokers looking to upscale in the current environment.
The first was for brokers to take some of their talented existing admin staff and train them to do loan packaging or get them accredited as a loan writer.
“That’s probably the best way to find good talent that doesn’t take quite as long to train because they already understand your business,” she said.
The second piece of advice she shared was to leverage the opportunity that technology provided for boosting productivity, adding that tools such as Docusign, bankstatements.com, digital fact finds and video conferencing apps all played a valuable role in streamlining broker processes.
“It’s never been easier for customers to work for the broker,” she said. “Take a little time out to see if you can automate the process in your office with a digital tool to make it easier for you and have a better customer experience.”
Connective executive director Mark Haron told MPA that brokers could use measures from this year’s federal budget to upscale their businesses.
Read more: How brokers can use this year's budget to hedge against burnout
“The housing market’s going to be strong for some time so it’s a good time to be looking at, how do I invest in the right staff in the right roles, so that I can help continue to grow my business and do it in a way that’s sustainable,” he said. “Brokers need to look at the abilities for them in terms of the instant asset write offs and the Jobmaker wave subsidies. They’re incentives for brokers to grow in their own businesses and help them to invest in their own businesses.”
Some of the measures announced in this year’s budget to help job creation included more than $16 billion in tax cuts by 2023-24, including the reduction of the small and medium sized company tax rate from 30% to 25% in July 2021, as well as the extension of temporary full expensing and temporary loss carry-back for an additional year.
Haron commended the government’s childcare subsidy increase, adding that this not only enabled more people to gain employment, but that it could also help to create better female representation in the industry.
“Certainly something that we need for the industry is a lot more female participation,” he said. “Hopefully that will enable brokers to be able to continue to grow their businesses and they’ll be able to look to hire more people - including women who are looking to get back into the workforce.”
Kate McIntyre is an online writer for Mortgage Professional Australia. She has a wealth of experience as a storyteller and journalist for a range of leading media outlets, particularly in real estate, property investing and finance. She loves uncovering the heart behind every story and aims to inspire others through the artful simplicity of well-written words.Email | LinkedIn
