Experience and technology drives success

Priscilla: Welcome to MPA TV. My name is Priscilla Dickinson, journalist at Mortgage Professional Australia. Joining me today is Darren Liu. Darren is the co-founder of non-bank fintech platform Finstreet, which helps brokers write more non-bank lending. Darren has been named one of MPA's top 100 brokers for 2022. He is driving significant change in the mortgage and finance industry through knowledge sharing and cutting edge technology. Darren, congratulations on this amazing achievement. How are you today?

Darren: Good. Thank you very much for the congratulations. Thank you. I'm very well. Thank you.

Priscilla: Thanks, Darren. I'll start by asking you, could you share with us what your brokerage, my home loan stands for and how it helps customers.

Darren: Right. So my home loan is established like all the other brokerage on the market. Like we're here to provide options, competitions, advice on mortgage products and features. So bringing that transparency to customers for a loan product, our slogan like a better advice and view people. So we'd like to build a long term relationship with the customer as we believe it is always a transfer of trust for customers to choose us, helping them to make a decision on our biggest financial product. So it's a continuing journey that we help them at different stages of their life. So when we have customers, you know, sometimes the the customer starting from their first home property with us and then into their investment portfolio and towards to the self-managed super fund investment. So some of the customers growing actually from the beginning with us to like a very long journey. And some of the customers are doing small business is where like they're starting from like, like us doing a start up. But later on when they grow with us is actually growing the needs for the financing their business as well. So warehouses or business finances, etcetera. So we've seen our clients now having actually their children or the next generation talking to us about their first home buying journey. So we enjoy this journey with our customers growing together.

Priscilla: Excellent. Thank you. And I understand that you have a strong focus on advice and mentorship and helping up and coming brokers. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Darren: Yes. So that mentoring program or boot camp program was initially for our internal program, as we always seem, brokers, fellows asking similar questions in regards to how to get into the industry, learn the products policy and growing the business. We thought we could probably contribute some of the knowledge and experience we have learned along the way. So we've traveled with our what we call better advisor program. Firstly, last year in 2022, during the COVID 19 period. It was online fortnightly program that we share some of the topics around the industry basics, sales, marketing, operation, compliance, diversification, etcetera. So within the urine practice, we've had this program redeveloped into a boot camp. So and we're keen to work with industry peers as well. So bringing more mentors to help the brokers to learn and grow. So within that program we had say one of that called a newbie boot camp program is a 12 weeks of boot camp, helping candidates to learn the basics and have an opportunity to practice in real scenarios with with the mentors or a certified mentor during this learning period to actually we assist them the candidate to become a mortgage broker. And the other program called Better Advisor is here to help brokers in the industry. Already someone who has already started their brokerage, but they might need more support into the sales marketing so it's more focused on growing their business with the with all the peers support. So that's kind of a program that we have in at the moment to help the the new to industry brokers and also existing brokers to to grow. But we also thinking of in the future to partner more with marketing agency to provide leads to brokers in regards to help them to get more business. And also by doing this as well, we partner with non-bank lending non-bank lenders as well to provide more options to our brokers as well to grow into a more diversified product as well. So that is something we're working on.

Priscilla: Excellent. Now I understand. So obviously you set up your brokerage in 2014, but more recently, you've developed an exciting platform lone street. Could you talk to us a little bit about that tech platform and how it actually helps brokers write business?

Darren: Sure. Yeah. And soon you will see Lone Street actually will be rebranded to Finstreet. Now it's more like a non-bank marketplace or a non-bank fintech platform We've seen as a broker in the past myself, we've seen this challenge in the industry where many of the non-bank products are not being very familiar to most brokers. So that we've done deals with major lenders who've been focusing a lot of on major and second tier lenders. However, in some occasions there are customers not fit into the category. So within that regard, so with Finstreet, So we'd like to bring more of the non-bank options to brokers in terms of products, trainings and knowledge. So people will be more familiar with what are the products out there can help customers say prime or or non-conforming lending specialist lending et cetera. And also with developing this platform to help the efficiency and transparency to bring that efficient and transparent to the brokers so they can improve the day to day work, leveraging the technology piece as well. It's not going to be like a magic helping brokers to get deals through, but it's actually like saving half of the time by doing a daily admin work. So in that case, the brokers will be more having more time to service the customer as well, and also bringing a better customer experience to to the industry. So it's kind of like a first of all, we get more solutions from the non-bank lending space to the brokers and meanwhile we'll bring the technology piece to help the brokers to get like easily to find the right solution with the technology and also improve the efficiency in their day to day work.

Priscilla: Excellent. And so just finally, obviously, technology is a very fast changing environment. Could you tell us a little bit about what role you see technology playing in the broking industry and say 5 or 10 years, how that might evolve and look like?

Darren: Um, yeah. Recently. One of the topics that chat GPD is very, very hot topic. And that brings attention for all of us that someday our job might be replaced by AI. So in the coming 5 to 10 years. So however, within that transition period, we, I think we could do better with the help of technology to drive just like mentioned, drive the efficiency in our day to day work and providing a better experience for us as a tech user or as also for our customers. We've seen we've seen in industry already, like some like some lenders, pioneer lenders in the industry providing ten minutes of approval for the customers. At the moment it only represent about 5 to 7% of the client base. But when it comes to like when it comes to complicated deals, it might need a human being to be involved in the assessment. But it is already something that we start seeing that the AI, the machine and the technology actually can help the lender to better manage the risk and also giving that efficiency during the during the application process onboarding process so customers also get a better experience. So but in the meantime, at this stage, I will say we still need a hybrid model. So technology and human touch and only when the customers are ready, say in the next generation the customers are really start their property journey by a finger fingertip. So in that sense that the customer are ready so that go to market strategy will be will be the place to go for those pioneer technology lenders. But we do enjoy the benefits from technology right now like we're using zoom in this in this interview. So it's like more game changing tool for every one of us that we all agree that by Zoom meetings for brokers is save a lot of time for us to travel and meet customers and delivering almost the same experience we could have now and also creating an opportunity as well for brokers to service regional area customers or broaden the customer base and potentially soon will be meeting customers in Metaverse soon. And the AI assistants, you know, we've seen some technology companies trialing that to help customers reviewing their current rate in a real time with the open banking data. And the job for mortgage broker finally is not going to be focused too much on like a rate comparison. It could be better done by the machine. However, the advice we give or provide to the customers will matter. And with that efficiency drive driven by the technology or improved by the technology, we could have more time servicing customers and providing a better customer service, hence improving the customer experience. So this is something I think will be more focused on how we could do better. And we have the same like same vision to create a platform for things that we could drive efficiency for brokers to deliver a better advice and also more lending options to customers. Meanwhile, it is also a transition to the same goal that we can bring more rewards back to the customers. In similar things. I think idea coming from CBA can bring this on loan and some ANZ and only get this one to finance is actually all do the same ideology behind it is reward the customers by by utilizing the technology to get this efficiency in the business by saving that cost of onboarding the customer and maintaining that relationship. But in the end, bringing all these benefit back to the customers. If you're staying longer, it's not going to be a loyalty tax, but you staying longer with the relationship, appreciate the relationship and you get reward by a discount on your home loan rate. So that is something I guess is the innovation in the technology could eventually benefit back to the brokers and also the customers.

Priscilla: Thank you, Darren. Thank you for watching, MPA TV. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Darren: Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you.