The Future of Mortgage Broking – and how to be a part of it

In 2010 Blockbuster Video filed for bankruptcy.

Just six years earlier, in 2004, it had 9,094 stores around the world and employed 84,300 people.

New technology, which Blockbuster Video did not adopt, destroyed it.

It was destroyed by mail order DVD services such as Netflix, which then evolved into the video streaming services we all use today.

But Blockbuster Video was itself a new technology company. It was built around the technology of VHS video players and then added in DVDs and Blu-rays.

One of the big reasons Blockbuster failed is that it had a heavy investment in physical shopfront locations which made it very difficult to adapt to changes in technology that made its existing business model unviable.

Consumers loved big video stores – its just that streaming of personal entertainment is more convenient and lower cost.

15 years ago most people had never heard of video streaming. They didn’t know they wanted it. But when it arrived, it had a huge take up and destroyed major businesses.

What we need to understand is that our clients will switch to services that are more convenient and cheaper, no matter how popular we are right now. Whatever arrives, people will eventually use them if it is effective, simpler and cheaper than the alternatives.

That is not the case yet, but eventually I’m sure it will be.

However, we don’t need to be afraid of new technology, but we do need to keep track of it and integrate it into our businesses. And we need to ensure we have a business model that makes our client’s lives simpler and better.

We need to be constantly aware of new and better ways of serving our clients and take on board new technology ourselves that simplifies things for our clients. We need to be adaptable and definitely not ignore the new and better ways of reducing the pain points of our clients.

Everything starts with looking at the experience your clients have and what is difficult for them.

Recently McDonalds brought in screens at the front of their stores where you can order food and have it delivered to your table. No need to line-up and try and remember your order then stand around waiting for it to be made. They have improved my customer experience through considering new technologies and adding them into their business if it made their client’s experience better (and probably saved them costs as well).

Back to Blockbuster – we have a big advantage over them. They saw the future was video streaming, but they had thousands of physical retail outlets that they couldn’t simply throw away.

We all know the future involves loan application processes that are made much simpler by technology – although I do not know how quickly they will be here and truly effective – but we are nimble and can adopt these new technologies into our businesses. Not least of all because they will make your life as a broker easier as well.

A big mistake brokers can make is to be transactional in nature. By that I mean we believe the service we provide is to simply complete the transaction of a home loan. If that is what we do, then we are in trouble – because if a computer program can do it more easily for the client, the client will use it.

What we need to do is to become a lifetime service to our client, beyond just the act of getting them a home loan. This is one reason I have introduced the Low Rate Forever Service. It is why I wrote The 7 Easy Steps to Mortgage Freedom and Mortgage Broking: Lead Generation and Sales Mastery. This service is a promise to your client that for as long as they have their home loan with you, they don’t need to worry about it, because you are actively managing it for them.

We are no longer saying ‘our job is to get you a mortgage’ – this is offering help with a single transaction now and another transaction later when they need another home loan.

Instead we are saying ‘our job is to help you become debt free faster’. Providing that is a lifetime commitment to them which is better for you and better for them, one that you need to actually support with genuine actions that deliver it. Not just emails to our clients with rate updates and reminder information, although this is important to have as well.

You are my clients. You are all individual or small mortgage broking businesses.

When one day, a client can go online and press a button and their financial documents and history are automatically collected and analysed and they just have to sit back and let it happen, where is the place for the individual mortgage broker?

The question I am asking is, when that happens, what is the business model of the future us, the individual mortgage brokers?

My answer is this.

The successful Mortgage Broker of the future has:

1)      Online Visibility and Reputation

Here Mortgage Australia helps you with:

  • Facebook Business page and ongoing posting of articles
  • Google My Business presence and information about collecting Google Reviews
  • Your unique page on the Mortgage Australia website
  • Collection and online publishing of ongoing reviews from your clients
  • Continued work on improving the Search Engine Optimisation of the Mortgage Australia website
  • *Soon we will be starting on a suburb page rollout supported by client case studies

 

2)      Continually assesses and adopts new technologies that simplify the home loan process for clients

Here I try and support you with:

  • Introduction to you of any new technologies that may help you, such as CashDeck, ZipID, Ezidox, RPData, OneonOne, etc.
  • Private Facebook Group so we can all help each other with loan scenarios
  • The technology systems, current and future, provided by AFG

 

3)      An Educational Marketing approach that builds your proposition as a lifetime service to your clients and referral partners.

Here Mortgage Australia helps you with:

 

4)      A focus on the experience of your clients

Here I try and help you with:

  • A loan processing service so you can spend time on your clients and less on paperwork and in front of computer screens. Also, our offshore admin team can provide additional services to you so you can focus on your clients.
  • Our Sales and Marketing training program
  • My Mortgage Broking: Lead Generation and Sales Mastery book which explains what I believe is the direction your business needs to move towards

 

5)      A lifetime service that keeps your clients close to you and away from competitors

  • Here Mortgage Australia helps you with:
  • The Low Rate Forever Service which delivers exactly that to your clients – our best efforts to keep their interest rate low for as long as they are your client so they can become debt free and build wealth faster.
  • The 7 Easy Steps to Mortgage Freedom book which explains why you are more than just another mortgage broker.

 

6)      Compliance support

Here Mortgage Australia helps you with:

  • Compliance Resources
  • Loan Auditing with a focus on improving standards
  • A Loan processing team that can handle your loan applications and aspects of compliance work
  • All of the above is explained through the Induction emails that everyone has received from me, and there are new services like the Low Rate Forever Service that I will add to that soon. I am happy to restart you on the Induction emails if you would like to get them again.
  • The future of my business is inextricably tied to the success of yours and I am always looking for new and better ways to assist you and I hope to be doing that many years from now.
  • My advice to you is to take me up on the resources that I have developed because they are drawn from what I see as the best practices of successful mortgage brokers and what we will need to remain viable long into the future.

I am always available and happy to discuss any and all of the above – https://davidham.as.me/