Before entering broking, Sam Walker was a publican. In 2008, he left hospitality and in a casual chat with his mortgage broker was told, “I think you’d be a great broker” because of Sam’s natural financial acumen. Deciding to take the plunge, Sam transitioned into the world of finance broking.
Working as a solo broker for five years, he then went on to open a brokerage with three partners. At the same time, Sam met Bechara Boutros, a former banker who also transitioned to broking in search of greater flexibility and freedom beyond the conventional 9 to 5.
Through countless hours, hard work and unmatched dedication towards their customers, Sam, Bechara and their business partners found a blueprint for success that yielded their efforts to become the leading office in their brokerage across Australia – an accolade they held for nine consecutive years.
With similar objectives and desires, and the mindset that you’re stronger as a collaborative unit, Sam and Bechara sought a new direction and made the decision to create a new business together.
Driven to build a business equipped for growth and utilise their shared experience & knowledge for the benefit of the next generation of brokers, they formed Loan Market Vantage.
“The same service, the same faces but with more opportunity for us, our clients and our business partners.”
Ambitions
With their sights set on building a business that was bigger than themselves, Sam and Bechara knew they would need a team of exceptional brokers capable of servicing a broad spectrum of lending both in volume and specialty. An inclusive, enabling environment for the next generation of brokers.
“We want to build a team of brokers, quality not quantity, that can help propel the business forward by propelling themselves,” Sam explains.
“We have a huge amount of experience to share. We want to create a team people want to be part of. To enable brokers to build a business within a business, setting them up to grow and prosper based on their ambition,” Bechara adds.
“As brokers we work so hard to build our businesses and our personal brand,” explaining that choosing an aggregation partner is never an easy decision.
“We wrote a list of aggregators we were open to learning more about. We then spoke to our colleagues and industry figures to get their recommendations. Then we started to approach aggregators from there,” Sam recalls.
Key to their decision-making were the following attributes that ultimately led to them partnering with Loan Market:
- The level of support on hand – covering systems, marketing, business processes and finding, training and retaining quality staff;
- Commercial terms that supported their ambitions;
- A brand that resonated in the market;
- Affiliation with Ray White;
- An inclusive and progressive broker community with a positive culture.
Solution
The duo aim to grow the business profitably while creating a training ground for brokers without sacrificing the customer-first reputation they’ve worked so hard to build.
“What we’ve experienced with Loan Market and LMG has been supportive, practical guidance. There’s no high pressure or anybody pushing us in a particular direction. We didn’t expect LMG’s support to be at the level it is. A lot of people can be all talk, but we didn’t find that to be the case with LMG. The onboarding process was tremendous.” – Sam shares.
To be at the top of the industry for so long, it’s clear Sam and Bechara have finely tuned the art of broking.
Yet to grow a team, they needed to build out their internal systems to optimise for scale and efficiency. They didn’t realise until they came together and mapped out their workflows that each broker was operating considerably differently.
By leveraging the practice of continuous improvement facilitated by LMG’s Kaizen workshops, the team established a consistent way of working and streamlined their business procedures, allowing them to build volume beyond their individual loan writing. The most significant gains in productivity can come from employing the smallest changes, especially by way of efficiency.
The goal was to grow the team to 6-8 people in their first nine months and hit this in only four. “We didn’t think we would hit the growth we’ve had until the first 6-9 months, but we’ve done it in 4. We now have to put more seats in!”
They’re working hand-in-hand with their Broker Success Manager and State Director to identify and eliminate all bottlenecks successfully, making more deals sail through, and allowing the directors to focus their extra time and energy on team building and mentoring.
In addition to gaining more time through improved operational procedures, Loan Market Vantage has reaped significant benefits from the intuitive nature of MyCRM’s interface and business-level functionality and reporting.
Results
Since becoming Loan Market business owners, Sam and Bechara’s vision for the business has been to create an organisation that not only prospers and grows but also becomes a place where talented individuals would want to be a part of. They have not only realised this goal but have surpassed it within a short 6 month time-frame, rapidly expanding their team to 11 full-time staffers, including 9 brokers and 2 personal assistants. The business has also grown to other states and is in the process of building out a national presence.
They have also proudly diversified their business offering by adding asset and commercial finance to their repertoire. This move has enabled them to help more customers achieve their financial goals; and now equipped with an extensive lending panel and flexible funding solutions, the Vantage team is facilitating more niche finance requests. An achievement which previously was an out-of-reach desire.
Through Kaizen, one key takeaway for Sam and Bechara was to implement a process that transcends their own personal ideology and working style. They realised that to build a legacy business, they needed one process for all staff to follow – from culture and mission to loan writing and systems. This small change has resulted in Loan Market Vantage enjoying a 10% uplift in productivity across the board.
