New broker thrilled as peak body honours top achievers
Attending the Finance Brokers Association of Australia Awards of Supremacy for the first time last week proved to be an auspicious occasion for Melbourne’s Amol Khuntale, who won New Finance Broker of the Year.
It was also the first time Khuntale, director of brokerage ASK Financials, had entered the awards.
The seventh annual national FBAA awards were held at the Royal Pines on the Gold Coast on November 1 as part of the FBAA 2024 National Industry Conference.
The 2024 FBAA Awards of Supremacy recognised winners in 16 categories, including residential, commercial and asset brokers, aggregator and lender BDMs, mentors and mentees, industry suppliers and champions. There were also broker of the year awards for the states and territories.
FBAA managing director Peter White (pictured below), who dressed up as the Joker at the fancy dress-themed awards evening, said the event honoured outstanding professionals in various categories.
“Those who achieve in our industry work very hard and deserve recognition for their success,” White said. “However, it’s important to note that while only one person can win each category, we also pay tribute to the finalists and all others who make our industry great.
“The success of any industry depends on its people, and we are fortunate that finance and mortgage brokers and the many others who support us and work with us are dedicated to providing excellent service to our customers.”
Khuntale (pictured above), who was also a finalist in the FBAA’s Finance Broker of the Year – Victoria, said it was a wonderful feeling to win New Finance Broker of the Year.
“I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest – this was the first time attending an awards function … I had that gut feeling that I have a very good chance of winning because last year we turned things around [at ASK Financials] quite significantly,” Khuntale said.
Award boosts credibility, rewards effort
As someone who has only been a broker for 18 months, he said the accolade did add a lot of credibility to his profile. “People want to deal with a broker who knows what he’s doing,” he said.
Khuntale said all brokers work hard and it was important to have a vision and set goals.
“When someone recognises you for all the hard work that you’re doing, it means really good things, that we’re doing a good job but that also motivates us to do further good things. We have our targets but it validates us and pushes us to do better.”
Investing sparked broking career
Prior to becoming a broker, Khuntale worked for ANZ in various data roles including institutional banking, group risk and group lending, with his last role there being a director in the financial crime division.
But it was his interest in property investment that sparked his move into mortgage broking. Khuntale has a portfolio of 10 properties that he has built up over the last 12 years.
“When I was building my portfolio, I struggled to find a broker who could understand my needs,” he said. “The first two or three properties it’s vanilla deals, but as you grow your portfolio you need out-of-box solutions.”
Unable to find a broker, Khuntale joined the broking industry himself.
“I always wanted to get into the property space full time; I love numbers, I love strategy so brokering is something that naturally resonated really well with me.”
He decided his niche in broking would be the investment space, helping clients to grow and scale their property portfolios “without the hassles or troubles that I personally went through”.
Khuntale said he started creating strategies for his investor clients on Excel spreadsheet models but soon realised that it wasn’t the right approach, so he and a partner recently launched investor platform Investar.io.
The platform tracks property investments in real time, comparing their performance against the market, features in-house valuations and connects to clients’ bank accounts.
“It reverse-engineers your financial goals for you – if you want a passive income of, say, $100,000, it tells you how many properties you need, when you should be buying and selling,” said Khuntale.
While it has been launched to buyer’s agents so far, the plan is to eventually offer it to mortgage brokers, accountants and financial planners.
Lessons learnt as a new broker
Khuntale is the sole broker at ASK Financials, which aggregates with AFG. He has a team of seven that he employs as his back-office support based in Bangladesh and India.
His advice for new to industry brokers is not to chase too many leads until you have good support staff and enough of them in place to handle the workload.
Khuntale said that in February, he was using a third-party back office support firm with one credit analyst when he went out and secured 80 leads in one week.
“I was not able to handle this, the back-office teams was not able to handle it, my credit analyst was not able to handle it, and my service levels slumped completely down.
“So the biggest lesson I learnt was first have a good team around you, have your back office sorted before you go out and get more leads – because even if you have one client that receives good service, that client is going to refer more business through their family and friends.”
Khuntale said changing from using a third-party service provider to employing his own staff had made a big difference, streamlining the process, boosting service levels and response times, with each client being assigned a dedicated account manager.
He said monthly loan settlements had grown – from $14.5 million in August, to $18.5 million in September and $25 million in October.
FBAA Awards of Supremacy 2024 winners
National award
National Finance Broker of the Year: Zakee Sheriff, Infinity Group Australia
BDM awards
Aggregation BDM of the Year: Jerome Zaldivia, AFG (pictured below with Amol Khuntale)
Asset & Equipment BDM of the Year: James Pattison, Valiant Finance
Lender BDM of the year: Amanda Mowbray, Metro Consumer Finance
Mentoring awards
Mentee of the Year: Peter Savage, Savage Money
Mentor of the Year: Andrew Tan, Masters Broker Group
Industry awards
Industry Supplier of the Year: Credit Fix Solutions
Industry Champion of the Year: Tanya Sale, outsource Financial (pictured with Peter White below)
Broker awards
New Finance Broker of the Year: Amol Khuntale, ASK Financials
Finance Broker of the Year – Commercial Asset & Equipment: Will Hamer, Loan Market Accelerate
Finance Broker of the Year – Commercial Property: Dale Sparke, STAC Capital
Finance Broker of the Year – NSW/ACT: Zakee Sheriff, Infinity Group Australia
Finance Broker of the Year – QLD/NT: Catherine Gandy, Madd Loans
Finance Broker of the Year – SA: Peter Savage, Savage Money
Finance Broker of the Year – Tas: Emmanuel Marios, Derwent Finance
Finance Broker of the Year – Vic: Rishi Bhatia, KRIA Mortgages
