Network champions diversity over dollars
Settlement figures are a key measure of success for brokers, but according to the national business manager for Nectar Mortgages, it should not be confined to dollar signs.
The ex-business coach and host of the Online Broker Think Tank said in his view, helping brokers build their business to achieve the right outcome for them personally is most important.
Having worked across different aggregator groups, Nectar Mortgages national business manager Andrew Stevens (pictured above) said while sales tend to be a top focus for aggregators, they should be more focus on the value they can add to brokers.
Franchise groups tend to place a lot of importance on financial results, and how they can help brokers settle more loans. Along with selling more white label products, the dollar value conversation tends to dominate discussions, Stevens said.
“What’s more important is [whether] the business is providing their life with the outcome they need or want,” Stevens said.
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A high-volume business isn’t the most profitable business to run, Stevens said. As an aggregator to mortgage broker members, Stevens said Nectar Mortgages delivering better outcomes for businesses and customers – and for a broker’s lifestyle – has been a key focus.
“The conversation starts with, ‘is your business currently contributing to your life what you want to get out of your business’… if it isn’t, how can we help you do that?’,” Stevens said.
As an unintentional by-product of the strategy to help brokers to get more out of their life, Stevens said 15 of the last 20 business owners that Nectar Mortgages brought on board were females.
“Having a culture that is open to diversity of businesses has created diversity of business owners,” Stevens said.
One of the female broker businesses that recently onboarded with the aggregator said what attracted her to the group was the ability to have an open conversation, where she felt safe, and that it wasn’t just performance-based.
“I think that we’ve been able to demonstrate that we do listen, through our programs, training support coaching and also in the way that we reward behavior,” Stevens said.
Celebrating successful business goes beyond the biggest seller of the month, to celebrating a business that may for example, allow a mum to pick up their kids on time, he said.
“It’s celebrating different types of business and helping people build those businesses,” Stevens said.
The Nectar Group has awards which reflects its values around authenticity and openness. Since the beginning, it has tracked net promotor scores from its customers, and celebrates and rewards customer service.
“You might have someone who delivers a brilliant outcome for their customer, and they [are] rewarded for that - even if they’ve only done it for three customers that month,” Stevens said.
The aggregator also runs fortnightly training online, and Stevens says the people it champions and uses for advice aren’t always the high performers.
“It’s about who you give a platform to, to express their views and creating diversity and voice,” Stevens said.
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At Nectar conferences, the aggregator may bring in someone considered an expert in their field, letting them be comfortable in the space they’re in and champion it, rather than requiring them to meet an ideal mortgage broker, he said.
Stevens also runs the online, industry-wide broker Think Tank, to which around 1,000 brokers participate or attend webinars. Through the initiative, he said he’s noticed that the average broker isn’t championed at awards nights – and is unlikely to nominate themselves for an award, because “that’s not the outcome they’re trying to achieve”.
Stevens said he had identified a gap in the market where brokers want to collaborate with other brokers, and don’t care who the lender or aggregator is.
“They want to have somewhere they can speak to other people dealing with the same issues and they’ve got a space where they feel safe to express themselves without feeling that pressure from an aggregator saying, ‘how much are you going to settle?’,” Stevens said.
He praised Nectar Mortgages’ “old school” approach, which asks how the aggregator and broker can collaborate to provide tools and resources to help brokers get the right outcome from their business.
Referring to the concept of “collaboration over competition,” Stevens said there was something powerful about people coming together to compete “with each other, not against each other”, for improvement of the overall industry.
“It’s something we saw that worked during the royal commission from an industry body point of view, but there’s no reason why it can’t happen at that next level down,” he said.
Within the broker Think Tank, Stevens said there were times he would come across a candidate for a competitor and send them through. In the current environment where people don’t feel they have a voice, it’s about forming and nurturing key relationships, he said.
While traditionally the approach has been that unless there is a dollar sign attached to it, it does not get prioritised, in addition to Nectar Mortgages, Stevens said some of the sub-aggregators or smaller aggregators across the market are “stepping up into that support piece”.
Nectar Mortgages is a mortgage franchise and aggregator. Brokers joining the aggregator can either operate as an independent business or use the brand and lead generation tools in their business.
