MPA caught up with MFAA CEO Siobhan Hayden on the importance of having a standard term to describe brokers.
What you decide your professional title should be as a broker is ultimately a personal choice, but having an officially recognised reference is important, as it unites its members under a common banner across the industry.
The industry’s two associations landed on the same page when the MFAA announced they had changed their standard term to describe members from ‘credit advisor’ to ‘finance broker’, matching the term the FBAA was using.
MFAA CEO Siobhan Hayden met with 1,000 brokers as she travelled around the country at the start of her tenure, and as she asked each one about changing the term, she found there was a disassociation with the term ‘credit advisor’.
“The heavy weight of the feedback was that we’re more than mortgages, we definitely don’t like the term ‘credit’, and we acknowledge that ‘broker’ is still a referencing point from consumers, lenders and the media,” Hayden says.
“Interestingly, the FBAA have termed their customers ‘finance brokers’ for a longer period of time, so in knowing that, I thought that was also a good parallel.”
Hayden notes the decision to change the term was made based not only on the feedback from brokers, but also working around what the media terms brokers as and what customers refer to them as.
“Trying to mitigate all those challenges, ‘finance broker’ was the term that we settled on,” she says. “What we needed was a standard term in our association to reference our customers … brokers can adopt the term that they best feel represents them, but we wanted a term that we thought better represents our customer.”
Although ‘finance broker’ is the standard term across both associations, how brokers represent themselves to their customers is a personal choice. Brokers go by all different titles, ranging from ‘finance broker’ or ‘mortgage planner’ to ‘finance strategist’ or ‘financial consultant’.
The reasoning behind their title choices also varies; brokers point out that the title they choose to represent themselves with depends on their clients, the market and the services they provide, and also what the consumer is most likely to recognise.
“The industry has grown up being known as finance brokers,” a Sydney broker told MPA. “’Credit adviser’ is like calling an esky a ‘food and beverage cooler.”
“I believe that there is already a strong marketing connotation/traction in the wider community for ‘mortgage broker’, as people already understand the role of the occupation,” a NSW broker added.
The industry’s two associations landed on the same page when the MFAA announced they had changed their standard term to describe members from ‘credit advisor’ to ‘finance broker’, matching the term the FBAA was using.
MFAA CEO Siobhan Hayden met with 1,000 brokers as she travelled around the country at the start of her tenure, and as she asked each one about changing the term, she found there was a disassociation with the term ‘credit advisor’.
“The heavy weight of the feedback was that we’re more than mortgages, we definitely don’t like the term ‘credit’, and we acknowledge that ‘broker’ is still a referencing point from consumers, lenders and the media,” Hayden says.
“Interestingly, the FBAA have termed their customers ‘finance brokers’ for a longer period of time, so in knowing that, I thought that was also a good parallel.”
Hayden notes the decision to change the term was made based not only on the feedback from brokers, but also working around what the media terms brokers as and what customers refer to them as.
“Trying to mitigate all those challenges, ‘finance broker’ was the term that we settled on,” she says. “What we needed was a standard term in our association to reference our customers … brokers can adopt the term that they best feel represents them, but we wanted a term that we thought better represents our customer.”
Although ‘finance broker’ is the standard term across both associations, how brokers represent themselves to their customers is a personal choice. Brokers go by all different titles, ranging from ‘finance broker’ or ‘mortgage planner’ to ‘finance strategist’ or ‘financial consultant’.
The reasoning behind their title choices also varies; brokers point out that the title they choose to represent themselves with depends on their clients, the market and the services they provide, and also what the consumer is most likely to recognise.
“The industry has grown up being known as finance brokers,” a Sydney broker told MPA. “’Credit adviser’ is like calling an esky a ‘food and beverage cooler.”
“I believe that there is already a strong marketing connotation/traction in the wider community for ‘mortgage broker’, as people already understand the role of the occupation,” a NSW broker added.
