The only strategy he had when starting out in broking was to leverage his real estate network
Clarity Home Loans mortgage broker and 2019 MPA Young Guns finalist Nitish Kumar walked the path of a real estate agent for about six years before becoming a broker.
He made the career jump when he and his wife wanted to start a family, and he wanted to have the option of taking weekends off. Kumar knew he couldn’t have that in real estate due to the open houses on weekends and auctions.
After referring mortgage broking clients to Clarity Home Loans for around five years, Kumar decided to move over to the brokerage.
"Mortgage broking has allowed me to get to a stage where I am able to have weekends off with my family," Kumar told MPA. "It also allows me to have the flexibility of leaving early a couple of days a week to pick up my daughter from day care and spend some time with her."
Within only roughly 18 months in the broking industry, Kumar has already learned much about managing business and client volumes. He has also already accomplished a lot. He has gone from settling $22m in his first six months to $80m in the following 12.
It’s all about speed
Kumar didn’t have a detailed strategy when he started out in broking. The only strategy he had was to write down a list of real estate agents he had worked with, and to try to build a relationship with them. Things have changed considerably since then. While 40% of his business still comes from real estate agents, in the last six months, a significant portion of it has come from client referrals.
Kumar’s team spend time explaining the process to clients during the initial appointment to ensure they understand every step of the process, and to avoid any surprises along the way.
“From there, it is all about the speed of the communication,” Kumar said. “We try to get the application to the client within 24 hours of the appointment. If the client sees an immediate turnaround from appointment to application, their confidence in you is enhanced, and I find the rest of the transaction much less stressful.”
When it comes to giving regular updates to clients, Kumar sets expectations he knows he can beat to wow clients. According to him, clients “will love you” if you tell them you’ll get back to them within two days, and then do it ahead of schedule.
Knows the exact number
Kumar knows exactly how many clients he needs to meet each week in order to achieve his target, and he regularly evaluates his performance and volumes against where he wants to be.
“I try to keep it pretty simple,” Kumar said. “I have one list which has all of my tasks for the day and all of the loans that we are working on that have not been submitted to the lender yet. Once a loan is submitted, we use our aggregator software to track everything from there.”
With the help of the agency’s assistant, Mel, Kumar spends more time each day interacting with clients rather than working on admin tasks.
“We have a management team with over 40 years of experience in broking, and they have helped me with learning to manage volumes, as well as letting go of some of the non-dollar productive tasks,” Kumar said.
