My toughest test... with Mark Davis

MPA brings you Mark Davis, one of the industry's thought leaders and on how he handled his biggest challenge

Each week MPA brings you advice from the industry's thought leaders on their biggest business challenge and how they tackled it. This week we speak to Mark Davis, director of the Australian Lending and Investment Centre.

MPA:   What has been one of your biggest challenges in business to date and why?

Mark Davis: To date we have found the major challenge being able to run a business that runs in tandem and at the same pace as the banks that service us. Our investment model is quite complex and the banks that can associate with us are long and far between due to the complexity of our clients and nature of the applications we submit.

MPA: How did you overcome this challenge?

MD: We have worked extremely closely with two of the majors to ensure that they can cater for our clientele. There is no use sending clients to banks that will have future road blocks for the journey that we send our clients on. I don’t believe in churning ever so it’s a matter of meeting the banks risk, legal and credit areas and making them able to see the varying differences with managing and assessing investment clients. To date we have completed this and are well on the way to securing a third but it's like turning the Titanic, it takes a lot of energy and passion to make such large organisations see the light.

MPA:  What are some of the key lessons you learnt from this experience?

MD: Banks can be changed and we see our business as having a role to do this and in turn change the industry to make it a lot better for all involved.  Let’s face it, we all want to evolve as humans and ALIC is doing everything they can to make changes and assist banks, brokers and thus, in time, the customers will have a far better experience and the industry will grow from strength to strength for making such changes. It’s a matter of finding the banks with the appetite for your business and if you are writing large numbers, trust me, they will listen and want to be heard.

MPA:  How have those lessons benefited you in business since?

MD: By being proactive with the banks and showing them models that we need as a business, we all win as writers in the industry. CBA have made some major changes over the past 36 months since our first discussions and we like to think that every investment loan structured via CBA has a greater chance of working better for the client. By having banks that support our model/ changes, we can write more and our clients can achieve far greater goals and hence create greater wealth.  This in turn makes the client a longer proposition for the banks that we work with and the end result is that all parties win.

MPA: If you were to tackle this again, would you do anything differently?

MD: To be honest, I would be even more direct with the banks and ensure that period that we have completed this was over two years not four years. As discussed, they are hard to turn around and if I could do it again I would cut to the chase a lot sooner.

MPA: What advice would you give to other brokers facing a similar situation?

MD: Don’t associate with too many banks. Use investment banks that want to grow with you and remember one thing, the banks don’t know everything, there is a hell of a lot that they need to be educated on to make sure this industry keeps thriving the way we all want it too. Trust yourself and try and make changes as life is short and we need to make it happen now!!!