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Perth, |
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Broker's mystery client
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It was somebody pretending they wanted to take out a housing loan. He was checking out Peter's style: how he presented the information, if he knew what he was talking about and if he declared the fees he would be paid. Peter must have passed the test, because he has just been chosen as a finalist in the Australian Mortgage Awards, from among 7904 mortgage brokers. The national winner will be named at a ceremony in Sydney on September 12. Peter, who works from home in Shenton Park, says he still has no idea who the "mystery shopper" was. Five years ago he quit working in a bank after 20 years and became a mortgage broker. Peter said that at the bank he'd managed in West Perth, he had worked all day Saturday and on into the night, sometimes until 1am. He'd gone home, collapsed exhausted for a few hours and returned at 7am Sunday to try to finish the week's work before the bank opened for business on Monday. About then he realised he'd had enough of 90-hour weeks without being paid overtime. He decided: "This has knobs on it. If I am going to work so many hours, then I want to be paid for them." Peter said his new job as a broker gave customers the service banks used to provide when he started working, but which had drifted away over the years. He became so good at mortgage broking - helping people to find suitable mortgages - that he started his own business from home in Shenton Park, overlooking Lake Jualbup. He said this week: "My approach to people is, I'm your old-fashioned bank manager. "I can sell all the different banks' services. "I show clients up-front the list of banks I represent and the fees they pay me. The client can then see if I am pushing a particular bank's product. "We can sit outside on my front porch and look at the ducks on the lake while we figure out what is best for you. "It's far less intimidating than a regular bank office." He said in recent years he had met many customers who had been refused loans from banks; yet, when he made the application for them, they had been approved. He said: "Part of the problem is that the people often working as managers now have very little experience and there is rarely experienced management for them to ask. "The banks have retrenched so many staff in their 40s, 50s and 60s that they are desperately short, and some are actually trying to recruit them again now." Peter said banks needed to blend technology with a face-to-face service. He said: "WA leads Australia with more than 50% of private housing loans arranged through brokers. "Yet 15 years ago in banking we didn't want anything to do with brokers. "We called them the 'prostitutes' of the finance industry. "Now we can see they deliver a genuine service to people that the banks can't match. "For instance, a few weeks ago I had clients who bought a house through a mortgage I arranged and they had a house-warming party for 100 friends on a Saturday. "On Saturday morning they found the bank had stuffed up the deal and they had no cash for the party. They rang me in a flap. I went and took $500 out of my account and drove over to their house and they gave me a cheque. "On Monday, I could go to the bank and using 'bank-speak' sort things out so I could cash the cheque. "Had the clients been dealing with a bank, they would have had no hope of getting that mess sorted out over the weekend." Peter said most of his work was done in afternoons and evenings with clients visiting him at home or he them. This week, he went to see a mother at Challenge Stadium and show her a range of mortgages while her two children did laps in the pool. |
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