The Canadian Mortgage Awards is proving to be the perfect vehicle for new brokers and brokerages, as they hope to leverage award wins to build bigger books of business and credibility with peers
The Canadian Mortgage Awards is proving to be the perfect vehicle for new brokers and brokerages, as they hope to leverage award wins to build bigger books of business and credibility with peers.
Mortgage Scout, founded by agents Deren Hasip and Hercules Galang and officially launched in July, has taken the industry by storm and earned a nomination for New Brokerage of the Year. Hasip and Galang spent around two decades as mortgage specialists for banks—Galang was a top 1% producer for TD Bank and Scotiabank—but that wasn’t enough.
“We left the banking space as mortgage specialists and cut our teeth as a team working under the Verico Premier Mortgage Centre beginning in 2015, but with everything that’s changed in the industry, including with new qualification rules, we realized we couldn’t just be one-trick ponies. We had a vision of what we wanted to be,” said Hasip. “Nobody cares what you did as a banker when you come to this space; you have to earn your stripes as an independent broker.”
Hasip added that Premier Mortgage Centre was instrumental in helping the duo scale their business, but that now they’re ready to elevate Mortgage Scout to the next stage of their vision.
“You can hire a cast of people to support you in administering files, but we wanted to create an atmosphere that allows people to be mentored and trained. A lot of people say these things with aspirations to do them, but few deliver. We want to deliver, and one reason we can is because we have Hercules, who was a top 1% producer and is well-liked by his peers. He’s a natural mentor and a lot of people admire his achievements.”
Another impressive new arrival to the industry is Emily Kiparisas, an agent since only November 2017, who’s up for the Young Gun of the Year Award. A star agent with Toronto-based Mortgage Savvy, Kiparisas is yet another erstwhile mortgage specialist with a bank who realized she could offer her clients better service from within the broker channel.
“I was working at TD as a mortgage agent and found that I could only provide my clients with one solution and, unfortunately, not everyone fits into a large bank’s bubble,” she said. “I moved over to the broker channel so that I could provide my clients with unique solutions to their situations. With Mortgage Savvy, I have the ability to identify with my clients’ needs, as opposed to approaching it solely as a sales strategy. I feel like I have the ability to become more invested in what’s best for my clients.”
True to her word, Kiparisas wasted no time building a strong reputation within the industry and with the public, and she hopes winning a Canadian Mortgage Award will elevate her standing to even greater heights.
“We’ve already advertised our nomination, so we’ll definitely advertise a win even more,” she said. “My niche is first-time homebuyers and winning a CMA would give them more insight into who I am and how hard I’d work for them. Having an award like this behind you validates you in the eyes of your peers and your clients.”
Having smashed last year’s nominations record, the April 26th award show at the Liberty Grand in Toronto promises to be a memorable one.
