The Coalition of Independent Mortgage Brokers of Canada has been making waves in recent months as the voice of the industry's autonomous firms and, as the Canadian Mortgage Awards’ platinum sponsor this year, it has a message for the industry:
The Coalition of Independent Mortgage Brokers of Canada has been making waves in recent months as the voice of the industry’s autonomous firms and, as the Canadian Mortgage Awards’ platinum sponsor this year, it has a message for the industry:
“CIMBC is very cognizant of the change and disruption that’s upon us,” said John Bargis, owner of Mortgage Edge and founding member of CIMBC. “In fact, CIMBC, to a great extent, has itself represented disruption with its vastly different model in comparison to that of the networks by giving brokerages the opportunity to truly promote their own brand, with the power of numbers behind them and with no monthly fees and no hidden costs.”
One way in which CIMBC advocates for its membership is by forging robust lender relationships.
“Technology, quality, process, operations, management systems, efficiencies and much more are all critical pieces that will determine the success, or failure, of one’s business going forward, and CIMBC is affiliating itself with all the right partners to ensure the longevity of our broker members’ businesses.”
Bargis added that the organization’s ultimate aspiration is to build and spread awareness for broker channel members who want to take their businesses to the next level rather than merely maintain a transactional business model.
“The Coalition of Independent Mortgage Brokers of Canada is all about supporting the brokerage and its agents with unencumbered access to lender partners without any hub intervention and at top compensation levels. It’s that good and very transparent, which is something the industry isn’t accustomed to.”
According to Bargis, the Canadian Mortgage Awards are the perfect vessel through which CIMBC could get its message out to the industry. In many ways, the CMAs align with CIMBC’s ethos of providing an independent, uncompromised voice.
“As a longtime advocate of the industry as a whole, I’ve always been of the opinion that having an independent organization in place that runs an awards function as well as the CMAs is the best way to go,” he said. “The CMAs ensure that everyone in the industry has an opportunity to win an award based on merit versus membership.”
Indeed, this year’s awards show features a slew of independent brokerages, one of which is Mortgages of Canada, nominated for Brokerage of the Year—Diversification. According to the firm’s founder, it was selected to offer a quick loan product with which it enjoyed immediate success.
“We had some great success earlier in the process, so we expanded it through other brokerages,” said Samantha Brookes. “We were selected as the pilot project.”
The 13th annual CMAs on April 26 will be Mortgages of Canada’s first trip to the awards gala and Brookes says the brokerage has already advertised its nomination. If it wins, she already has designs to make sure the public is aware.
“We just started advertising our nomination last week by putting out a press release and we’re making a bit of a push,” she said, adding that Mortgage of Canada just hired a new social media company. “We tapped into digital marketing last year and we found that it can be lucrative. I’m going back to my grassroots, which is social media marketing, and if we win you’re going to see it everywhere.”
