Connective's Mark Haron on the aggregator's AMA win and plans for brokers
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1. What has been the biggest contributing factor to Connective’s recent AMA win for Most Effective Online Presence – Aggregator?
Our corporate values guide us to always work for our brokers and be innovative in everything we do, and this mindset provides us with a genuine competitive advantage.
Our culture of continuous improvement is supported by a strong investment in our online presence and broker platform, Mercury. Our in-house development team, for example, doubled in size over the past year and now comprises more than 30 professionals, representing almost one third of all Connective staff.
- How does Connective intend to add further value for brokers in 2018?
With the industry changing rapidly on multiple fronts we will continue to listen intently to our member brokers in the year ahead and move quickly to ensure their evolving requirements are met.
We work on a two-week release cycle and our brokers are encouraged to request developments that will assist them to run more efficient and profitable businesses. More urgent requirements can be turned around in as little as 48 hours.
The changing dynamics of the industry presents an opportunity for brokers to problem solve for their clients and our job is to provide our members with the tools and resources that support them in fulfilling this role..jpg)
- What is your biggest concern for the industry right now as an aggregator?
The relentless rate of change to the policies and pricing of lenders is the greatest issue impacting the industry at present. The flow on effect is an overall reduction in borrowing capacity and this clearly impacts the number of clients a broker can service.
At the same time, however, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for borrowers to deal directly with lenders and this presents a great opportunity for brokers to help their clients navigate the ever-changing and uncertain landscape.
Brokers also need to be cognisant of ASIC’s mounting focus on Interest Only loans and be very diligent with their documentation when assessing a client’s suitability for an IO facility.
4. What was Connective’s biggest achievement in 2017?
The strategic decision to move our Mercury platform to an Application Programming Interface (API) environment. This initiative is significant as it enables our brokers to connect with hundreds of different apps and software providers, and ultimately allow our brokers to work with other aligned professions by making it easy to communicate and information share across IT platforms.
We are already seeing many of our brokers utilising the API platform and these brokers are reporting a number of benefits across their businesses, particularly in the area of attracting and retaining clients.
