State ambassadors and other changes ahead for brokers' association
If anyone at the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts wasn’t fully clear on how to be better – one-third of the sentence “brokers are better” that’s the clarion call for the group and repeated with mantra cadence at every turn – the group’s CEO put any lingering confusion to rest during a recent membership gathering.
“If you don’t live up to being better every time you talk to a consumer – every single time – then the person sitting next to you is the one that’s going to feel the impact,” AIME’s CEO, Katie Sweeney (pictured) told a standing-room-only crowd during her keynote address “Putting Brokers in the Driver’s Seat” during the fifth annual Fuse convention that took place Sept. 29-Oct. 1 in Las Vegas. “The person sitting next to you is also the one that’s going to feel the impact if you do those things.”
In the not-too-distant past – namely the Great Recession of 2008 – brokers were cast as antagonists for the mortgage meltdown that very nearly wrecked the entire community. Subprime mortgages were all the rage until balloon rate mortgages imploded en masse, and a bogeyman was sought for the detritus left behind. Institutional investors who packaged such volatile loans as securities were cast as villains in the real-world drama, but brokers emerged as collateral damage.
Since then, the word “broker” has retained its pre-Great Recession sheen. But the work continues in educating the public about why they are better for consumers than traditional lenders and banks.
“The positive message behind the word ‘broker’ comes from the constant and consistent drive to be better,” Sweeney said. “It doesn’t mean because you’re a broker you’re automatically a better solution for a borrower, but it means you have the ability to be.”
Yet it takes hard work every day to be better: “Every single day that you commit to learning more, to growing more, to serving more people, to giving back and informing your community in a new and different way, the word ‘broker’ gets better,” Sweeney told the rapt audience. “Brokers are better is the message that helped unify a very fragmented group of people five short years ago,” she said, referring to its founding date.
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The defining slogan is now a charge: “‘Brokers are Better’ is now our responsibility to carry forwards so that 22% market share today turns into 30% market share in the next two years, turns into 35% and then 40% and then 45% because we all know that the local originator, the people who sit in the communities, that serve consumers who haven’t had access to lending solutions, to education to financial resources – those are the people who are going to make those communities better. And those people are you. Those communities aren’t going to grow without you; they’re not going to look at homeownership as an option without you. They’re not going to push lenders to provide accessible solutions to different types of homebuyers without you.”
Those going through brokers for their mortgage needs also become better as a result, Sweeney said. “People get better when they have the opportunity to have stable and sustainable housing solutions,” she said. “Those people get better when they work with a broker but only if you continue to get better.”
Sweeney insisted the clarion call was not meant to be divisive: “‘Brokers are Better’ is not intended to be something that divides an industry,” she said. “It’s intended to be something that motivates every single person here because we have the ability and the opportunity to be better. It all starts with being better internally.”
And being better starts at home, she suggested: “So, we took a long hard look at the beginning of the year and decided we had a few things we needed to focus on to make sure that we get better,” she said. “Better organized, better partners, better advocates, better educated, better leaders to leave a better impact. Better organized starts with structure, standards and stability. It’s not the sexiest thing in the world but it’s the most important thing we can focus on. Without structure and stability and sustainability we don’t have anything to be better for. We have to diversify our revenue opportunities. And I know you guys hear about money all the time, it’s a topic of conversation every single day. But for AIME to continue to grow and for us to have the option to be better in the direction the community needs us to be better, we have to look at better solutions to run our business – the same way that you do.”
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Sweeney outlined ways that AIME will strive to be better itself: “We have to focus on providing better solutions for our membership. Things that are going to allow you to grow, things that are going to allow our community to engage in different conversations. We need to focus on making sure we’re creating more leaders directly from the seats that you’re in.”
She vowed she was fit to the task of ushering in such change, despite not having a background in the mortgage industry: “I’m not an originator,” she began. “I never have been. I’ve never closed a single loan in my life. But I can guarantee you that I can run this trade organization better than anybody else,” she declared, prompting spontaneous cheers and applause from the audience.
“But to do that, so that we continue to get better, we need more leaders,” she continued. “We need more people that are working directly with consumers, that are bringing ideas forward, that are focusing on policy and regulatory change that’s negatively impacting American homebuyers. We need people that can come up with creative solutions to education. We need people who can focus on creating a standard and a structure – something that we can continue to build towards. Those decisions are not for me to make in an ivory tower by myself. Those are decisions to be made by the leaders who are among our communities right now.”
She gave an example of past growth that will serve as template for the future: “We have 15 member-led committees that launched in the last 12 months,” she noted. “Twelve months ago, we had zero. Those are the leaders you’re going to see out on social media. Those are the leaders who are taking time out of their day to make sure you get better. We hired a member leadership team. The leadership team is not just me. There are 10 of us. Six member leaders, four business leaders and of that group today 50% of our leadership is women,” she pointed out, again drawing applause from the audience.
She continued: “To better serve you, we have to better reflect who you are, our members and our leaders need to look the same - the same way that brokers and originators need to reflect what the American consumer looks like right now. Better partners. It’s not a secret the industry has not always been a fan of ours – we’ve ruffled some feathers and shaken things up a bit in the past – but we’re building alliances with organizations that have long-standing reputations in Washington DC. Why does that matter? Because when we bring bills to the table, when we bring ideas and concepts forward, we need the weight of people who have already proven themselves to lock arms with us to push our message forward. We need state-level groups. Next year you’ll see us launch state captains. Every single state will have a leader that is hyper-focused on their state regulation that’s there, the consumers that are there, the products and solutions that exist in that market so that that information can make it back to us so we can focus on bringing more opportunities, more access, so that we can focus on making every broker better in their market.”
She noted another example of change that’s been undertaken in the way of sponsorships: “Working more closely with our sponsors,” she said in ticking off goals. “We’ve had great partnerships with many of our sponsors over time. This year alone we expanded to over 65 industry partnerships. When I started at AIME two and a half years ago, we had 12. These are the partners that are going to help you get better. Talk to them. Give them feedback. Give us feedback. Because if you sit on issues, we can’t work on creating solutions and solutions are how we get better.”
Better advocates is another goal for AIME: “By the end of this year I will have traveled over 320 days,” she said. “I technically live in Dallas, but you won’t see me there very often. Of that travel, over 80 days will be in Washington DC alone. We’re committed to building that reputation, to building something that will leave a legacy, to building something that will allow our industry to be better on the Hill. We’re here to stay. And we’re going to make sure everybody knows it.”
