Choice CEO Stephen Moore tells MPA about the flexible relationship that the aggregator aims to foster with its brokers, and reveals big plans for the Choice Home Loans brand
Choice CEO Stephen Moore tells MPA about the flexible relationship that the aggregator aims to foster with its brokers, and reveals big plans for the Choice Home Loans brand.
MPA: What is Choice’s key service proposition?
Stephen Moore: Choice really provides genuine\ business partnership, and with that is a proven ability to help take broker businesses to the next level.
So our focus is on helping brokers to realise their core business potential. That’s irrespective of whether they’re a successful business today and wanting to take their business to the next level, or new to the mortgage market. The nature of Choice is that we’re a larger business, and brokers can choose to use their own brand, join one of our groups, or use our own brand (Choice Home Loans).
MPA: So are you quite flexible in your relationship with brokers?
SM: Yes – it’s your business; it’s your choice. That’s how we position it. And our role is to work with brokers to work through whatever the right decision is for them, one thing being constant, and that is the great support we provide to help them realise their business potential. Financial strength and security is one key point that sets us aside from much of the marketplace, as are a strong focus on industry-led training and development and a proven track record of growing broker businesses. This industry can talk a lot, but it’s the results that count.
MPA: Tell us more about Choice Home Loans
SM: Choice Home Loans is the heritage of Choice originally, and it’s an area that we are giving increasing focus to. It’s a nationally recognised brand and certainly growing in brand awareness.
We provide business level coaching and comprehensive support, so it is probably the most comprehensive support with a focus on managing an effective and efficient business. The tradition is a strong heritage of Choice Home Loans. In fact, that’s how Choice Aggregation started 15 years ago.
But, most importantly, it’s a future-looking business. There’s an exciting future lined up, with online as a core component of the business.
MPA: What kind of broker would be well suited to the Choice model?
SM: One theme is commitment to grow your business, and this is where the Choice proposition comes into its own. If you’re truly committed to growing your business, then we’re truly committed
to help you to do so. The pinnacle of that is Choice Home Loans, and that’s for brokers who are looking for more holistic business support, business coaching, etc. So it’s not just about writing more deals, it’s about running a better business. For CAS [Choice Aggregation Services] it’s really about an aggregator who truly understands your needs. That’s what we focus on. It’s not about a macro-level view of the world about what generically we think broker needs are. It’s individual, one-on-one, and tailoring our support to their needs accordingly.
MPA: What are the key differences between Choice and the other two aggregators within the Advantedge group (FAST and Plan)?
SM: The way we look at the three businesses from a segmentation perspective is about the natural
strengths of the different brands. So in Choice’s case the natural strength is in the high support and
proven ability to take broker businesses to the next level. In FAST, for example, it’s more about the independent self-directed broker – more of a user-pays model; they may not necessarily look for the high support we provide in Choice. And Plan’s natural strength is with larger groups – ‘supergroups’ is the term we use. Each business provides great corelevel support for brokers, but they’re probably the key differences across the three brands we focus on.
MPA: What would you say to brokers who have concerns about Choice being owned by NAB?
SM: Choice being owned by NAB is a godsend for brokers. It really is. There are a couple of things. One is the financial certainty for brokers. A broker’s number one asset is their client base and the income they receive from that client base. So it is critical to have financial strength and security behind your most important business asset, and that’s what NAB is bringing to the table. The second is the ability to invest in the business. And what we’re investing into Choice simply would not have been possible under private ownership. It’s now three and a half years since NAB acquired the business, and members directly benefit from the investment. Podium is a great example: $20-plus million invested to date and continuing. Our investment in Choice Home Loans is the most recent example of that – simply because it would not be possible under private ownership.
MPA: What kind of feedback have you been receiving from brokers about Choice’s services over the past 12 months?
SM: First of all, broker feedback is what drives our priorities. It’s something that we’re very disciplined about. Our latest broker satisfaction survey is very positive – an 83% satisfaction rate, which is increasing and a good result overall. The relaunch of Choice Home Loans is something that’s been received extremely well from the existing membership. Rebranding, a new online presence, increased marketing support; and we’re getting lots of interest now from brokers wanting to join a premium retail brand – that’s certainly something that Choice Home Loans now provides. That’s a bit of a ‘watch this space’ – we’ve got more coming on Choice Home Loans this year.
MPA: What are your key strengths and also key areas of focus?
SM: Number one is around Podium – certainly a key strength. The focus, and that’s what our members are asking for, is to embed CRM in their businesses. The other is business management. As an industry we spend a lot of time on the technicalities of being a broker as a practitioner, but not enough on running an effective business. So Choice are really focused on helping brokers to run an effective business. It’s about business fundamentals, business planning, practice management support – and we have a range of forums that we use in that space.
The third is around peer-to-peer learning. That’s around best practice: facilitating best practice sharing amongst our members, more networking and learning from other brokers.
We hold roundtable sessions on certain topics. From an academic perspective, peer-to-peer learning is in fact the most effective learning type. And intuitively it holds true as well. I’d much rather
learn from someone who’s living and breathing it today. And that really resonates with Choice members. It’s really about the core culture in Choice which makes it quite unique – members’ willingness to share with each other, to help each other and participate at a local level really does
make it quite a special culture.
MPA: How is this peer-to-peer learning implemented?
SM: We do a range of things. We facilitate webinars that involve brokers on specific topics – and they’re driven on the back of broker demand: the use of CRM, SMSF [self-managed super funds], whatever it might be. We run breakfast sessions on specific topics. We run breakout sessions at our business development days, and again they’re driven on the back of member demand. In the case of Podium, we have a Podium champions forum – so they are comprehensive early adopters of the system who directly input into our enhancements but also provide a mentoring source of expertise at a local level in the state – and they run sessions with brokers as well.
MPA: How are brokers adapting to Podium?
SM: We released it around 18 months ago now, and it’s an area that we’ve really invested in. So over the last 12 months what we’ve seen is a fairly fundamental shift in broker satisfaction with it as well.
In our latest pulse-check survey, 73% of Choice members say Podium is good or excellent.
MPA: Were there any issues with brokers adapting to Podium initially?
SM: Podium is a functionally rich system, and when we first released it, given that richness in functionality, it wasn’t the easiest to navigate. So we spent a lot of time not only on functionality enhancements but also on useability. And now Podium 2.0 is a very good system. Podium 2.0 is an end-to-end business system, and its focus is to help brokers to realise the efficiency of capturing data once and reusing it right through the loan’s life cycle – and, most importantly, to realise the benefits of running a business with CRM at its core, and that’s really the basis of it.
