Cynthia De Vera understands challenges migrant families face
Commercial finance broking tends to be a male-dominated profession but Cynthia De Vera says being a woman of Asian heritage is an advantage when it comes to connecting with small business customers.
De Vera (pictured above) is head of Australia for Swoop Funding, a commercial brokerage that began in Ireland and set up a base in Australia in 2020. She was born in Jakarta – her father is Chinese Indonesian and mother is Filipino, with her family migrating to Australia from Indonesia in 1997.
“I always sympathise and have a really big soft spot for small business owners who are immigrants because I have seen that along my journey growing up,” De Vera said.
“I also know how hard it was to make it in Australia as well, so I can have that deep empathy for them when they talk about their struggles and say ‘I really want to do this for my family’ – I completely get that.”
De Vera said her first job out of high school was junior finance consultant for Eclipx Group, formerly known as carloans.com.au, which provides financing for vehicles.
She said early on in her broking career she was one of only two female commercial brokers in the Eclipx team and it felt intimidating at first.
“There was another older English woman who became my mentor. Her name’s Melanie and she’s still my really good friend today. She guided me and said ‘keep your head down, keep working at it and prove yourself through performance’.”
De Vera said she always stood up for herself, and never saw being a woman as a differentiator but more of an advantage.
“The market is big and not everybody wants to deal with a male – sometimes people want to deal with a female, who’s a little bit softer and calm … being Asian, I can also relate to lot more different types of people.”
This was helpful given the wide range of customers Swoop dealt with, De Vera said.
Cynthia De Vera’s role and how Swoop works
After almost five years at Eclipx, during which De Vera rose to become team leader, she joined non-bank SME lender Get Capital (now called Shift), working as a relationship manager, then product development manager.
Then followed a short stint at Amex, before De Vera was approached to join Swoop almost three years ago, assisting the previous country manager and then being promoted to head of Australia.
De Vera leads a team of six Swoop brokers in Australia, based in Sydney. She said as well as managing PNL and growth and seeking further corporate partnerships, she liked to work directly with brokerage clients to assist them and keep her knowledge up to date.
Swoop started as a fintech in Ireland and has expanded into Australia. It also has a number of offices in the UK, including London, as well as New York, Toronto, Dublin and Cape Town.
De Vera said one of Swoop’s key supporters in Australia was former non-executive director Tim Brown, a former chairman of the MFAA and ex-CEO of aggregator Vow Financial.
She said Brown had moved on from Swoop recently to set up his own venture.
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“He’s such a great person and really grounded as well. He’s really hands on and always picks up the phone whenever you need him, which is really handy for me.”’
Swoop is a marketplace platform that provides funding options to businesses in the form of debt, equity and grants. The platform is distributed across three different channels – advisers, which includes accountants and financial planners; mortgage brokers; and business franchises.
The company also has its own brokers that work directly with SME customers to service their finance needs, including business loans and asset and equipment loans.
De Vera said Swoop worked with accountants and finance planners to broker loans for their customers through the platform.
Residential mortgage brokers who have a customer that needs a commercial loan can refer them to Swoop’s commercial brokers, who can workshop and settle the deal with a percentage coming back to the original broker.
De Vera said Swoop also worked with a number of aggregators, which provided access to a greater range of lending options.
Swoop also has partnerships with about 60 franchise brands, such as Baskin-Robbins, Anytime Fitness and Domino’s, giving individual franchisees access to Swoop’s brokers for their finance needs. The latest partnership deal, which has just been finalised, is with IKEA.
De Vera said unlike banks, which have limited time to spend with business owners, Swoop brokers can give franchisees feedback on their business plans, financial forecasts and discuss SLA turnarounds, credit appetites and savings requirements.
“Anything where a bank would go ‘that’s too small for us’, we’ll do it.”
While Swoop received 50 to 80 leads per month from franchises, De Vera said from those applications, it took three to six months for that realised revenue or approvals to come through.
“We get a lot of support and trust and have been able to prove ourselves as well.”
De Vera said Swoop also had a lot of small business customers that weren’t franchisees, including start-ups, transport firms, farming businesses, green tech, and ‘mum and dad’ shops.
Commercial broker learning curve
De Vera described her own journey to becoming a commercial broker as a “sobering experience”.
“There’s a lot of work that commercial brokers do behind the scenes.
“I think sometimes there’s a misconception that they know everything or that they have all the answers but the information or credit appetite changes on a weekly basis.”
De Vera said commercial brokers need to be constantly educating themselves and reading policy to ensure their knowledge is up to date.
“It's extremely difficult to find time to do that during a very busy week because you’ve got to assess the customers’ financial needs, you need to do servicing, you need to prepare the business proposal or the structure of the loan and then go back to the customer.”
Customers also believe technology means they will get a quick answer. De Vera said managing customer expectations had been a real learning curve throughout her career.
“If you’re new to broking you don’t quite understand the timelines or exactly what you need, especially during the last bit of the deal, such as settlement.”
Swoop’s approach was not about providing the quickest solution, or like some brokers “making a quick buck”.
The team took the time to do the job right, focusing on customer retention and “being proud of the work that you’re doing” so that the customer was still there at the end of the loan term.
“We don't want them to liquidate their business because they've taken on four or five different types of fintech debts,” De Vera said. “We draw a really clear line when it comes to that … when they’ve got too much debt the answer is no.”
As well as attending lender sessions and product updates, Swoop brokers spend each Friday afternoon doing learning sessions.
De Vera said she wasn’t a fan of residential brokers diversifying into commercial finance because it was such a specialised field which took a lot of time to become an expert in.
Commercial lending trends
De Vera said more businesses are currently leaning towards overdraft and line of credit options because interest wasn’t charged until the customer drew down.
“With a business loan or working capital, I think there's a little bit more resistance there now because people have realised how much interest and repayments that involves on a weekly basis,” she said.
“Some lenders charge a daily repayment, which is also extremely difficult for business owners to both manage the cost of funding as well as, you know, investing that back into the right area.”
De Vera said some SMEs were taking on multiple debts from different non-bank lenders, and due to poor financial literacy, were getting into financial difficulty.
“Now the non-bank lenders in the last two months have tightened their policies to immediately knock out those customers who have more than one non-bank lender.”
The third trend De Vera had noticed was the large appetite from people wanting to buy a franchise but not getting the support from lenders to do so.
“There's a lot of appetite there to open new businesses, just not a lot of support for funding for new businesses.”
What trends are you seeing in commercial finance? Comment below
