'We are reimagining what it means to be a broker'
Mortgage finance aggregator LMG dedicated a substantial chunk of its glitzy Growth Summit, held on the Gold Coast in early April, positioning itself as the home of the diversified broker.
As hundreds of LMG brokers descended on the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, they were greeted with a Welcome to Country before LMG’s executive chairman Sam White (pictured, left) set the tone for the following two days.
Speaking in front of graphs and data points to back his words up, White highlighted that broker growth in the residential mortgage market has started to plateau following years of breakneck advancement.
Although that is a testament to the nearly 80% share of the home loan market that brokers have captured over the years, it also raises the question: where does the industry go from here?
White’s answer: Diversification. This conference, White told the packed auditorium, should be looked back on as “the diversified conference”.
But if LMG plans to be home of the diversified broker, how does it hope to achieve that goal?
Missed opportunities
“We are reimagining what it means to be a broker and meet the needs of residential, asset and commercial clients,” said LMG go to market lead Lucy Kinsey.
Around three out of every four mortgages (76%, to be precise) in Australia are now written by a broker.
Brokers have roughly the same share of the asset finance finance space at an estimated 74%, but the numbers decline sharply in commercial finance.
By LMG’s own estimates, more than 60% of commercial finance deals are still written directly with lenders, implying a near $60 billion opportunity that brokers are missing out on.
Commercial lending is, therefore, “absolutely ripe for disruption with the superior services that brokers deliver to their resi and asset clients”, said Kinsey.
It could be a matter of necessity if the broking industry intends to keep growing. While there remains space for growth in consumer lending, LMG product manager Emma Bruce conceded that “it’s limited, but there is a big and real opportunity in the commercial space”.
But not all brokers have received the memo.
According to the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia (MFAA)’s ‘Value of Mortgage and Finance Broking 2025’ report, only 13% of mortgage brokers are active in the commercial finance space.
It’s not hard to imagine this small number escalating due to customer demands, though. As Kinsey said: “Clients want to be dealing with one business to meet all of their financial needs.”
The big lesson LMG wanted brokers to take away from the Growth Summit appeared to be: Diversify, or risk losing out to someone else.
Streamlining diversification
Enter MyCRM Diversified, the broker platform that LMG is currently shouting from the rooftops about.
LMG used the Growth Summit as the official MyCRM Diversified launchpad, although pilot testing has been going on for more than a year.
MyCRM Diversified is the physical, technological manifestation of LMG's diversification ambitions.
When MyCRM Diversified was announced to the public in mid-March, Loan Market chief executive David McQueen said: “With MyCRM Diversified, brokers can easily expand into commercial, whether they want to write the deals themselves or refer it to a specialist – all without extra cost, extra systems, or extra headaches – and in the platform they already use every day.”
LMG makes a compelling case for the diversified broker, but it raises an important question: DO brokers want to diversify?
A customer-driven trend
Helping homeowners own homes is, after, the cornerstone of mortgage broking, but for LMG group executive of commercial finance Stephen Scahill (pictured right), “good brokers want to do what their customers need”.
Chatting with MPA, Scahill explained how the diversification trend is overwhelmingly customer driven.
“The average person is going to have financial needs beyond just a mortgage… What we’re seeing is good brokers want to say to their customer, ‘I’m your destination for all your financial needs, whether that’s a car loan or if you want to buy a factory,’” he said.
Echoing Kinsey’s above comments, Scahill warned that brokers risk losing clients if their needs aren’t all met. He noted that self-employed customers have a particularly diverse financing needs.
“It’s about convenience for customers, but for brokers it’s also about securing your own network,” said Scahill.
Raising awareness
Asked why brokers still only write around 40% of commercial loans, Scahill suggested there is a lack of awareness among the general public.
“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know their broker can do (commercial finance),” said Scahill, although he agreed that they’re not necessarily at fault.
“I think we have a bit of a job to do to make our customers aware that that’s something we can do, and by investing in the systems and tools to make it more accessible,” said Scahill.
Diversification also brings with it some legitimate questions around broker remuneration. Time spent writing car finance is time taken away from writing a home loan, but for a fraction of the commission.
For Scahill, technological efficiency is key to combating this issue. The cost benefit of starting a home loan from scratch every time is questionable, so LMG has endeavoured, through MyCRM Diversified, to make the process quicker, while using as much reused data as possible.
LMG’s acquisitive appetite
LMG’s own diversification push gathered pace in 2021, when it acquired former NAB-owned commercial aggregators Plan, Choice and FAST.
The acquisitions, which now exist under the unified LMG banner, “skyrocketed the size of our network and brought some of the country’s biggest and best-performing commercial and asset brokers into the group”, said Bruce.
A year after the NAB acquisitions, LMG formed a partnership with Nodify Group to merge their asset finance operations, which effectively gave LMG brokers direct access to dozens of asset finance specialists and Nodify’s application and compliance platform.
LMG’s acquisitional appetite remained in 2023, when it acquired Commercial Lending Excellence (CLE), the specialist commercial lending technology platform.
In many ways, this was the most important acquisition to date, for CLE’s influence can be seen today in MyCRM Diversified.
Brokers will ultimately decide whether diversification is best for them, and whether LMG is the right partner to make it happen. But you can’t argue that LMG hasn’t put its money where its mouth is.
