Award-winning adviser loves his career
Proficiency in commercial lending comes down to fostering respectful relationships, developing expertise and matching client needs with a lender’s niche, a commercial lending specialist says.
iConsult director and chief adviser Satyan Mehra (pictured above) won the Avanti Finance Adviser of the Year – Specialist Lending and Commercial Mortgage Adviser awards at the 2023 New Zealand Mortgage Awards, which are organised by Key Media and supported by NZ Adviser.
Mehra’s brokerage iConsult also won Mike Pero Mortgages Brokerage of the Year – 1-5 staff.
Having worked as an adviser for close to six years, Mehra is a New Zealand qualified chartered accountant, holding a Bachelor of Business in accounting and finance. His business, iConsult, helps clients with residential mortgage lending, commercial lending, business lending, asset and equipment finance and vehicle finance.
iConsult was awarded as one of the top brokerages in NZ. Read our Special Report for the list of winners in the Best Mortgage Brokerage Firms in New Zealand.
With nine years’ experience in banking and an ability to “understand the numbers”, the award-winning broker said that aside from education, “passion” was a key ingredient to being successful in commercial lending.
“I love what I do so it never feels like work…I’m doing this more because I love it, than because it is a job,” Mehra said.
He spoke to NZ Adviser specifically about commercial lending and what has helped him to carve out a niche in this growing area.
Mehra focused on three things that have helped him to be successful and build a solid network of commercial clients.
1. Develop mutual respect
iConsult works on having a “valued relationship” with all of its clients. Fostering “mutual respect” is important, Mehra said.
Believing that people’s time is important, Mehra does not visit clients at their homes or complete applications with clients at their dinner tables in the evenings, as this may mean that they don’t give the meeting the respect and attention it requires.
“Whatever we do in terms of lending is for the client … if they’re buying a home or buying a business, so if they cannot spare an hour in their day or miss their lunch break and do an online meeting or come and see us, I can’t do much,” Mehra said.
“For me it’s that valued relationship: it’s very professional and has helped us to get where we are.”
2. Draw from experience and develop areas of expertise
Mehra sticks to lending, opting not to branch out into insurance.
He specialises in commercial lending, construction lending, specialist lending and business products, drawing from his first-hand experience running a number of businesses within various industries.
He is also fortunate to be able to draw on his banking background which gives him a solid understanding of credit processes and compliance.
For Mehra, complex business structures, financials and trusts are the areas in which he is able to use his education and experience.
“Those are the areas I really specialise in – that’s where I have a niche,” he said.
Distinct from completing a suite of forms, commercial lending comes down to supporting a deal so it stacks up, Mehra said.
Coming out the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are changing, incomes might be dropping and the rate of change is constant, he said.
“Over the last year to 18 months, there could be a lot of businesses that are impacted and incomes night be down … there’s a lot of opportunity in that specialist non-bank lending space,” Mehra said.
3. Match a client’s need with a lender’s niche
Commercial lending is multi-faceted, as commercial clients often have a mixture of home lending, commercial property lending and business lending, Mehra said.
This requires the adviser to consider cash flows, where to place debt, how to structure debt and work numbers through the numbers and make them work in line with the client’s goals, their credit position and their profit and loss.
Based on the understanding that specialist lending came at a cost, Mehra said that it was important to have full knowledge of a client’s situation: what they needed, their timeframe and whether the temporary increase in cost would help or hinder them.
It is about identifying opportunities where there is a need, understanding how a product is going to improve a situation and get clients to an exit, he said.
The exit plan may be to refinance, to sell a particular property, or to complete a business transaction.
“It’s understanding what a particular lender has to offer (what their niche is) matching the client’s need to that and working through the outcome – how it’s going to benefit the client,” Mehra said.
It can be thought of as “spending something to make something”.
“If you can see the benefit and if there’s an exit, that cost is just a cost a cost of doing business.”
A good commercial broker will have a plan and communicate it to the client, he said.
”You are giving them a thorough understanding of what it means for them,” Mehra said.
Above all, commercial lending involves building long-term client relationships, which Mehra said involved knowing their business inside and out and touching base at regular intervals.
