Self-employed week

Almost one in five workers in Australia are self-employed. It’s been a booming segment of the market for the last decade, propelled further by Covid as workers started-up their own business after being laid-off or re-evaluate their career ambitions.

Tomorrow, LMG wraps-up a week of online webinars and face-to-face workshops offering deep-dives into this critical segment of the market.

More than 1,800 registrations were taken for the content-rich webinars while 650 brokers turned out for face-to-face local workshops - a clear display of the appetite for self-employed training and insights.

Alongside lenders, LMG’s experts unraveled the complexities of preparing a self-employed application, identifying opportunities from which brokers can service the wider needs of self-employed clients and, ultimately, creating stickier relationships in their database.

Self-Employed Week comes on the back of LMG restructuring its broker offering with specialist service divisions - LMG Residential (led by Andrea McNaughton), LMG Asset Finance (Tom Caesar) and LMG Commercial Finance (Stephen Scahill). With experts to support diversification, LMG is ensuring its brokers are best placed in the market to service the full needs of self-employed clients.

“I got so much out of today … learned so much about different solutions for our self-employed clients. It was great to speak to a whole panel of lenders to find out all their niches (in lending), so I really got great value out of the day.” - Emma Madafferi, Fundit.

The week-long program included webinars focusing on:

Identifying opportunities with self-employed clients

Lenders outlined how they assess income in self-employed applications and experts delved into simple processes which brokers can undertake to identify further opportunities with their existing self-employed clients, creating stickier relationships at the same time. Being able to service the full financial needs of clients underlines the modern role of brokers as trusted advisers.

Supporting Documents and Reading Financials

This session was the most popular for the week, delving into some of the common mistakes the industry makes when understanding a self-employed client’s financials.

The session provided brokers with further insights into low doc lending and the differences between tax assessment versus a full assessment and the benefits to clients.

Experts also provided tips for unearthing information in statements that can unlock greater value for clients.

“It was great to hear from some of the commercial lenders and around self-employed lending. It was a great opportunity for us to understand a little more around what each lender does and how their products differ”. Brock Lynch - Finsync

Understanding different business structures

The legal and tax implications of different business structures - Unit Trusts, Family Trusts, company structures, Self-Managed Super Funds and more - are important for brokers to understand when servicing clients. Brokers were also shown to easily input the different structures into MyCRM for a smoother application.

Marketing to self-employed clients

All self-employed clients are looking for the convenience of a single broker who has the capability to handle all their finance needs.

In the session, LMG provided the best tips to market to self-employed clients:

• Marketing campaigns;
• Leveraging MyCRM;
• Newsletter content.

SMSF: Simple Refinancing

Self-managed super funds are popular amongst self-employed clients. LMG examined the steps and processes to provide simple refinancing solutions for SMSFs.

It’s the second time the aggregator has hosted Self-Employed Week and LMG Group Executive (Residential) Andrea McNaughton the scale of the event had doubled in response to demand.

“We want our brokers to be best-placed to deliver self-employed client solutions,” said McNaughton. “Education from experts on how to read business financials properly, and identifying opportunities for clients within the figures, is just one way we’re upskilling brokers.

“LMG’s experts in residential, asset finance and commercial finance will also support our brokers in offering a holistic approach to servicing self-employed clients, whether they’re looking for a new home, business premises or machinery, and the best way to structure the finance.”