Participants keen to help self-employed customers
Non-bank lender RedZed’s new free interactive digital education program has proven popular with brokers keen to understand the needs of self-employed borrowers.
Available to RedZed’s 5,000 accredited brokers, the Self-Employed Broker Academy only kicked off on October 9 and already 120 brokers have gone through the training with RedZed expecting at least 1,000 brokers to graduate over the next 12 months.
The academy includes five ‘eLearn’ video modules looking at various aspects of self-employed lending.
Each module of RedZed’s Self-Employed Broker Academy includes a five-to-10-minute e-learn component followed by a deep dive which goes into further detail via case studies, scenarios, exercises and infographics.
Overall, each module takes 50 minutes to an hour to complete.
RedZed Academy the result of broker feedback
Angelo Klidomitis, RedZed’s head of customer experience (pictured above), said feedback from participants ha\d been overwhelmingly positive.
“The deep dives in particular have proven very popular – generally any questions that brokers have had as a result of watching the video component of the training have been resolved within the deep dives,” Klidomitis said.
He said there were several reasons why brokers were looking to better understand the needs of the self-employed market.
“Those relatively new to the industry are hungry to improve themselves. They don’t like being in situations with clients where they feel uncertain of the answers. They are in a hurry to learn as much as they can, as quickly as they can so that can provide their customers the best available solution.”
Brokers tell RedZed of frustration over clawbacks
Klidomitis said some brokers have been frustrated by the higher number of clawbacks “experienced on the back of a plethora of cashback offers in the market”.
“The need to diversify away from an almost exclusive reliance on PAYG customers has been a common theme we have also come across.”
Klidomitis said the academy was all about providing the tools for brokers to unearth new opportunities and the starting point was understanding the size of the opportunity.
Brokers are taken through the range of different products that the self-employed may need during different stages of their business lifecycle.
“You can provide many more solutions to a self-employed customer than you can a provide a PAYG borrower,” Klidomitis said.
“This allows you to derive much more value from a single customer and if done well you can become their go-to for all their financial needs. This makes them less likely to churn, it often delivers referrals for additional business customers.”
Klidomitis said repeat business and referrals meant the need to constantly find new customers was diminished, which reduced marketing costs.
RedZed wants to ensure brokers’ knowledge relevant and up-to-date
According to Klidomitis, education and training are important in every sector, not just for brokers.
“I think the old saying of ‘if you’re standing still, you are going backwards’ is absolutely true.
“With technology, legislation and the sheer number of players in the industry it’s essential for all of us to stay up-to-date and relevant.
“I think there are a number of parties out there genuinely trying to provide brokers with relevant training, it’s a matter of finding it and making it accessible.”
Klidomitis said as many brokers were self-employed themselves, like all people running their own business they were expected to have a broad range of skills, meaning they were extremely time poor.
“Brokers have told me that what they want more of is genuine training that is focused on meeting a specific need rather than a product flog masquerading as education. This piece of feedback is what has driven us when developing the broker academy.”
Klidomitis said brokers were always looking for ways to find an edge and further improve their understanding around reading financials, and have meaningful conversations that would help them expand their referral networks.
“We have modules in the current Self-Employed Broker Academy that cover this, but we have been encouraged by the thirst that some of our brokers have to go even deeper into this area.
“I see this as an area that we will focus on in future modules. There has also been an appetite to zero on specific product categories that brokers feel they need some depth of knowledge. I won’t give too much away here but it has us got us busy.”
RedZed settles its latest RMBS transaction, worth $500 million
RedZed settled its $500 million RMBS transaction, RedZed Trust Series 2023-3 – its third transaction of 2023.
The latest funding deal is RedZed’s 18th debt capital markets issuance. It take the total issuance to $7.1 billion and features RedZed’s EU and UK Risk Retention-compliant structure, which was supported by real money domestic and offshore investors across all tranches.
“We are pleased to have firm support from real money investors across all tranches of the transaction which signifies a strong commitment to our securitisation program and confidence in RedZed's experience in lending to the self-employed borrower segment," said Chris Wilson, chief financial officer of RedZed (pictured above).
Calvin Cordle, managing director at RedZed, said the company was “pleased with the strength of support, from both our RMBS investors and bank warehouse providers, which means we are really well funded, firmly open for business and able to support self-employed borrowers with fast, fair and simple lending solutions during a challenging market”.
“Borrowers need stable, well-funded lenders during this time,” said Cordle who was appointed managing director in August this year.
CBA, NAB and WBC acted as joint lead managers on the RMBS transaction.
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