Company introduced a host of new support measures for brokers
Ahead of the Canadian Mortgage Awards 2021, we hear from the 2020 gold winner in the category of Employer of Choice – MERIX Financial – on the year that was, and what led to its success.
Last year we put tremendous effort toward innovation and providing solutions in an unprecedented time. Where other lenders may have tightened up their ropes in 2020, we extended as far as we could to support brokers and homeowners in a number of different ways.
When COVID-19 hit, MERIX was one of the very first to transition to a 100%-work-from-home structure to do our part in stopping the spread and keep communities safe. For several years, MERIX/Paradigm invested heavily in the best cloud-based technologies for flexibility with our business, so we were able to provide brokers and homeowners with seamless/uninterrupted service while keeping staff at home. We also quickly began offering COVID-19 support by ways of extensive financial education, FAQ resources, and providing mortgage payment deferrals up to six months. All staff worked evenings and weekends to address every question, concern, payment change, and deferral possible.
When Filogix was down for several days, MERIX was there to provide more solutions. While rates were increasing, we held low rates for three days longer and invented a unique solution providing brokers a template to submit deals as staff worked tirelessly overnight to manually ingest all applications. It was important for us to show brokers that no matter the landscape we will work together and support them to keep business going.
Another key solution we introduced was “Interest-Free for Three”, where MERIX pays the interest for three months on new mortgage applications. Homeowners are only responsible for making principal payments, significantly decreasing their required mortgage payment and providing relief in this uncertain time. This product has saved homeowners thousands, while locking in our lowest rates (NO premiums), broker compensation is NOT reduced, and savings are NOT just capitalized on to the end of the mortgage; it’s coming out of our pockets to support brokers/homeowners, and provide peace of mind. We even created over 100 free marketing pieces to help brokers promote their own businesses, take all the credit, and explain the benefits easily and effortlessly.
As COVID-19 continued, we understood that brokers were becoming more heavily reliant on Transfers, so we’ve extended a promotion where we covered the costs of fees associated with Transfers (on top of covering the cost of appraisals). Despite this being a huge cost to our organization, this was an extremely competitive option for brokers/homeowners. One thing we truly believe in is investing in our industry so that we can all grow. This is the same mentality that inspired our Trailer Fee Program – sharing the wealth and creating true partnership with brokers is the foundation of MERIX.
Our Trailer Fee program is an important pillar of MERIX and what makes us so unique. Trailers provide brokers with residual income by paying them upfront, at renewal, and every single year after. The program promotes partnership and reduces broker-churning/needless lender swapping by retaining homeowners with our dedicated renewal specialists and still paying the broker accordingly. Our retention rates are high, and we spent a lot of effort educating the market on the importance of diversifying, investing in the future, and how much Trailers can amount to long-term. For example, our largest Trailer Fee paid to date is on a mortgage funded in 2006 that the client isn’t paying down, so the life-to-date trailer earnings on this one single mortgage is $49,387.50 and growing! That’s over 365bps in commission that no other lender in Canada is offering. During times of decreasing income and increasing uncertainty, we’re extremely proud to have brokers redeeming tens of thousands of dollars from their Trailer accounts to soften the effects of today’s economy. One broker, in particular, cashed out $100,000 in June to supplement his income and do something positive. As entrepreneurs, brokers may also not have a retirement plan/income source to draw from in the future, but MERIX provides that. (Important note, with MERIX you aren’t locked into Trailers; brokers can opt for upfront commission through our Lendwise option and are able to choose their compensation on a deal-by-deal basis).
MERIX also invests heavily in education. We’re consistently transparent and provide regular updates to our industry partners, sharing educational emails and hosting weekly webinars (ex: insurer updates/clarifications, industry changes/trends, Filogix and B.O.C. updates, policy, client trends, homeowner education), and sharing various articles/updates on our social media daily (MERIX has the highest engagement stats on social media of any monoline in Canada). MERIX also started the year by launching our annual incentive program where we planned to reward brokers with an educational all-expenses paid trip to Milan, Italy, covering the cost of transportation, accommodations, registration to the World Business Forum, and several social events. Although this trip wasn’t able to happen this year, brokers are always motivated by it and we look forward to continuing to offer it next year and beyond. What makes our trip different than others is our heavy focus on education, always revolving around world-class events like the World Business Forum which brings together global CEOs/entrepreneurs/athletes/artists to learn best practices in leadership, decision-making, driving business forward and encouraging new ways of thinking. We choose events like this because we strongly believe in not only providing fun but investing in the education and growth of brokers and influencing the industry we’re a part of.
MERIX strives to support brokers/homeowners in every way possible from unique compensation to solution-finding and flexibility of offerings. We help the industry by providing frequent tips, education, and extensive free marketing for brokers to use and educate clients on product differences, rates, and penalty calculations; we work with all three insurer partners to provide options; offer competitive IRD calculations that save customers thousands; offer compensation choices, basisPOINTS rewards, and flexibility; unique products like our Interest-Only Flex, NPX MAX Mortgage, Enhanced Plus, Interest-Free for Three and more.
