Paul Hunt is a marketing consultant
I am sure you have seen by now thousands of posts showing now and then pictures as part of the #tenyearschallenge movement?
Judging by some of these posts, it feels like 2009 was decades ago, but don't forget that some other significant events happened in 2009:
• Barack Obama was inaugurated
• Michael Jackson died
• Iceland’s banking system collapsed
• Captain Sully successfully landed in the Hudson River
• Alliance & Leicester named as top lender in Q4 2009 (according to Evaluate Technologies)
• CML state that crunch could last until late 2009
• Paul Hunt joins Countrywide ‘officially’
All of this shows that 10 years is a long time and a lot has changed since then. However, in the wake of the financial crisis, the need to look after customers going through the toughest period of their lives financially will undoubtedly have laid the foundation of businesses for many brokers operating today.
One area that was slowly forming 10 years ago was the technology available to brokers, although thankfully in the last few years we have really seen an explosion in options and tools available to the intermediary sector.
I believe that 2019 will really be the year that brokers embrace technology, as it's clear that many technology providers have listened to the needs of brokers (or have been developed by brokers themselves) and they have identified areas such as placing cases, customer retention and rekeying as those which can be solved by technology.
The best technology also understands the value of brokers to their customers and so seeks to enhance the service they provide and support the broker in finding the right outcome for the customer.
Whether it’s a criteria search system like Knowledge Bank (they help brokers find the lenders who will accept a case within seconds), a retention tool like Eligible (a remortgage customer retention tool like Eligible (a branded broker system that allows advisors to pro-actively engage customers and improve customer retention) or literally a One Mortgage System (who incorporate CRM, document uploading, product sourcing and online lender dips under one roof without the need to rekey data), the plethora of other systems vying for your trade is growing every week and other options are available to those listed!
Some are free, some require you to send business via a certain route to receive discounts on the price (or get them free again) and some have tiered pricing based on the number of advisers in the brokerage, so it's always important to understand the options and ask, as they aren't always apparent.
You should challenge yourselves whether the use of new technology can improve the service you provide, increase sales, save you time or indeed do all three, should we start a #2019brokertechchallenge?
Anyway, back to the #tenyearschallenge, here's my 2009 photo vs my current one, laugh away!
