7 SHORE FINANCIAL

Established 2013

Marketing, remuneration and software are undergoing major changes at Shore Financial, explains CEO Theo Chambers

Entering the Top 10, as Shore Financial did this year, can hardly be accomplished through business as usual. “We’re actually going through a massive restructure,” CEO Theo Chambers explains. “We’re looking at becoming a bit more of an online brokerage, generating leads online on the back of our real estate data.”

Shore has long had a close relationship with real estate agents, especially Sydney estate agent Richardson & Wrench. Going online will enable Shore to target real estate clients in new ways, Chambers explains. “You can market to the landlords, market to the buyers … it’ll increase our value proposition to brokers.”

Chambers’ restructuring at Shore goes beyond marketing, however. The roles of learning and development coordinator and operations manager have been combined under a new operations manager, who brings with her several years of experience in finance. The brokerage’s commission splits will also be tiered to better incentivise brokers, passing on up to 80% of commission to the broker. Costs will be controlled by outsourcing some marketing and social media tasks, Chambers adds. “We’re probably getting more done now that it’s outsourced.”

Shore Financial is heavily dependent on residential lending commissions, a fact Chambers is particularly conscious of in light of the recent ASIC and Sedgwick reviews. “That’s why we’re looking at vertically integrating and getting a credit licence and selling our own product, to have our own team we can get things over the line with.”

The brokerage has already begun to diversify, taking on several financial planners and setting up Shore Legal, covering conveyancing and estate planning. “It’s not about the profit to be made in legal for us,” Chambers says. “It’s more about the value-add to our referral partners and clients.”

Finally, in an effort to improve the relationships between brokers, referral partners and clients, Shore will be introducing Oceania, a new CRM system for brokers. Oceania is geared towards better marketing for clients, allowing a broker to contact all clients with a particular bank to warn of rate rises, for instance. The system integrates with AFG’s Flex software and, according to Chambers, “it saves data entry work for the broker as it copies information from the customer automatically”. He’s confident Oceania will provide Shore with a major advantage. “I believe it will increase efficiency by 30% and increase actual sales results by 30%.”