Founded on relationships

In the midst of the many dizzying decisions that brokers have to make on any mortgage file, it’s easy for the client and broker relationship to get lost in translation.

Acutely aware that relationships are at the centre of the mortgage process, Kerri Reed, executive vice president at Premiere Mortgage Centre, has made it her career focus to identify and protect the relationships she sees as central to ensuring consistently successful mortgage outcomes.

Reed has chosen to foster, first and foremost, her relationships with her brokers, who she considers to be at the core of her professional family. She then puts the spotlight on the broker–client relationship. Both relationships help to solidify and propel the mortgage process forward, she says, taking it a crucial step beyond the rates-driven approach many brokers take with their clients. 

“I recognized early on how important the relationship with a client is,” she says.

This personalized approach to the mortgage business has pushed Reed to the top and cemented her position as a leader to watch.

Banking beginnings

Stemming from a banking background, Reed learned early on in her career what direction she didn’t want to go in. “I had been working for a bank financial institution since I was 16 and stayed on working for the banks all through university and into my first career job with the Royal Bank,” she says.

While she notes that this was a great training ground for the mortgage career that followed, she didn’t feel comfortable in the corporate environment.

“I discovered that the investment side to a client relationship was not really something that I was passionate about, and, to be quite honest, I was terrified.”

Deciding to put the client relationship first, Reed put her newfound wisdom to the test with a move to Oakville and a new role at Home Loans Canada.

“I could now solely focus on building relationships with clients for mortgage financing,” Reed says.

“I decided that I was going to live and work in the same space, which to me meant going to a grocery store in jeans and a T-shirt and also [being] in a real estate office dressed in a business suit presenting to 100 realtors.” As Reed honed her skills in the lending space, destiny stepped in when she met Don MacVicar, her future business partner and co-founder of Premiere Mortgage Centre, which they later set up along with his brother.

“We learned everything we needed at Home Loans Canada and were able to take [this experience] and build Premiere Mortgage Centre,” Reed says.

Building a home for brokers

From its very early roots, Reed and her partners had a unique vision for Premiere Mortgage Centre that they used as a road map to guide the business as it grew to become one of the largest brokerages in Canada.

Premiere Mortgage Centre’s foundation was built on the core belief that, to be consistently successful, brokers must never lose sight of the human and personal connections that are made every day in the industry.

“You have to be able to connect with people,” Reed says. “Connect on a personal level and build relationships with the people that you are working with.”

Providing an umbrella home for its brokers, Premiere Mortgage Centre has carefully maintained its foundations.

“I had a picture of a house, and the house was Premiere Mortgage Centre,” Reed said. “In the house, brokers could have their own room, or they could share rooms, and there was going to be a common area in the house. There would also be individual rooms, but no one could lock their door.” 

Guided by this bricks-and-mortar analogy, Reed and her partners expanded the brokerage to 160 agents who are all proven top performers in the industry.

“We didn’t expand to 160 agents overnight. It was one agent at a time, and now we’re the largest brokerage in Atlantic Canada,” Reed says.

The ‘house keys’ to success

When asked what opened the door to success for the business, Reed reflects before answering.

“There are a lot of brokers out there, and agents, who are very successful and have done this on their own,” she says. “So that means that they are not interested in help, and they will help themselves. That is not Premiere Mortgage Centre. We are here to support [brokers’] development and support the development of their individual business.”

This supportive, family-orientated approach to what is often a very individualistic business has been a key leadership quality for Reed.

“You have to be willing to support the successes and celebrate the successes, and in the harder times you need to be just present,” she says.

Reed’s approach to leading her mortgage team has also paid off with over $3 billion in funded residential-based deals in 2021 for the ‘house’ that she and her partners have built. 

Embracing whatever the next addition to her mortgage home may look like, Reed remains keenly aware that it’s the relationships formed along the way that are the cornerstone of the perfect mortgage foundation.