Former banker outlines why customers want brokers

“People bank with people - they don't bank with banks,” Mrs Young shared with LMG Executive Chairman Sam White in LMG’s most recent Success Breeds Success podcast.

“People make connections with people. Whether you do that online, face-to-face, it's the person that will make a difference.”

“Over time it becomes a situation (for the customer) of wherever you (the broker) go, I'll follow.”

Mrs Young, who operates a Loan Market business on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, made the move from banking to broking knowing the broker-client relationship offered a unique opportunity to build a business around. As a specialist in self-employed clients, she recognised the opportunity for multiple touchpoints with customers and deeper relationships.

However, she became busy early on in her career - to a point where the amount of time she wanted to invest in her client relationships became ‘humanly impossible’.

She hired a Client Service Manager - the first appointment in her dedicated support team she’s dubbed her broker ‘fairies’ (they magically get the work done while she’s busy with appointments).

Whereas some brokers prefer to be the face of the business and sole contact with the client, Mrs Young makes her support members part of the relationship from the outset. She makes it clear with the client around who is responsible for what.

“In the first meeting I have with the customer, I explain to them that I’m their strategic person, this is the plan and this is how we will do it,” she said.

“During the application process, I explain that the fairies are going to look after getting the documents together, relabelling documents, and come back to them if something didn't upload correctly or whatever. I explain that their loan application won’t come back to me until all their documents are sorted.

“In our Google Reviews, I always hear feedback that my fairies are amazing and they are: they flutter around in the background, get stuff done and bring it back to me.”

Mrs Young’s business is part of a growing trend of stronger back-end support. She has four support staffers handling everything from credit analysis to the client journey and settlements.

As business owners embark on this growth journey, Mrs Young said it was important for business owners to have a ‘tribe’ of other business owners in which they could share the journey. Her tribe came together during Covid when everyone was isolated by lockdowns.

Every week during the height of the pandemic, she came together with other Loan Market brokers over Zoom and Google Meets to check in on both growth strategies and wellbeing.

Post-Covid, the group still keeps in touch, growing together, helping each other remain on top of changing lender policies and other industry movements.

“I’m in a privileged position because at Loan Market we are quite community-focused,” she said.