With the figures recorded by this year’s Top 100 you would be forgiven for forgetting that the last financial year ended with restrictions and lockdowns brought on by a worldwide pandemic. Even in those final few months, brokers managed to write the second-highest combined value of loans this list has ever seen.
It wasn’t all plain sailing, though. Brokers across the board talked about challenges such as the restrictions on face-to-face meetings, managing their teams remotely, lenders changing their policies, and a slow market as people turned to refinancing rather than new purchases.
If the theme of last year’s top 10 was the importance of diversification and how it had helped brokers’ businesses, this year’s was on how vital communication and education have been.
Borrowers were fearful as no one knew what the future held, many lenders pulled back while others pushed forward, and the government released several measures for different cohorts of society. In short, there was a lot to keep customers updated on.
But this was a task the Top 100 took by the horns. While they all ramped up their phone calls and emails over the past year, some released newsletters, held webinars and recorded podcasts.
Despite the low interest in new purchases towards the end of the last financial year, this year’s numbers were helped by the fact that the first half of FY2019/20 saw an incredibly strong market as sentiment improved after the banking royal commission and federal election.
As this year’s top brokers reflected on the situation, many said things had really picked up again and they were now busier than they had ever been. While that should set up next year’s Top 100 for great success, let’s focus on 2020.
Rather than use total loan value to determine the Top 100, our method was changed last year to allow us to celebrate those brokers who are continuing to improve or who are writing those big-number deals. The ranking is now worked out with a weighted system using total loan value, average loan value, number of loans and loan growth.
Thank you to everyone who put themselves forward for the 2020 list, and congratulations to everyone who made it into the Top 100; it’s a great achievement to round off the year.
