After building their own careers in the industry, two brokers came together to create a mentoring and training group. Their aim is to provide mortgage brokers with the right tools for success
A broker business with a difference, Masters Broker Group provides mentoring and training to both experienced and new-to-industry brokers. The business was founded in 2012 by two mortgage professionals, Mario Borg and Andrew Tan, who saw a gap in the market for mentoring and coaching mortgage brokers by raising their skills and expertise.
Originally from an accounting background, Borg left his job and established a mortgage brokerage in 2004, which he sold eight years later. He has since re-established a broking business as a way of staying up to date and relevant when coaching the group’s members.
Tan has a mechanical engineering background but joined the broking industry in 1997 as co-founder of a mortgage brokerage, later co-founding subaggregator Members First Broker Network. Using his engineering expertise, he has worked on processes to reduce the time from application to settlement and improve the customer experience.
Masters Broker Group currently has 30 members: four new-to-industry brokers and 26 experienced. Most of those experienced brokers have been mentored by Borg and Tan since they joined the industry.
The mentoring includes business-building workshops, which involve ‘how-to’ events to help mortgage brokers increase their revenue.
Tan and Borg have learnt a lot from their own experience as brokers, and advise their mentees on how important communication is, why they should have a consistent, documented process, and that they should always underpromise and overdeliver.
Knowing what it was like to join the industry, the duo are passionate about helping new entrants feel like they are not alone.
“By being part of our group, they are in business for themselves, but not by themselves,” says Borg. “Running a mortgage broking business can be a lonely business, but by being part of our group they gain access to skilled and experienced mortgage brokers who have achieved great success.”
Over time, Masters Broker Group expanded its appetite to include brokers who have been in the industry for longer but might feel stuck and want to progress to new heights.
“The benefit for experienced mortgage brokers joining our group is that they gain access to timely information necessary to run a successful mortgage broking business, as well as to be held accountable to ensure they continually move towards their bigger picture,” Tan adds.
In the last nine years there have been changes in three areas that have impacted the group: regulations and legislation, such as the introduction of the best interests duty; lender policies and practices, which have affected the workloads of mortgage brokers; and competition from aggregators and mentors, which has raised the standards of the industry.
Moving forward, Borg expects to see continued impacts on the economy and employment levels due to COVID-19, but he believes the majority of the risks faced by brokers still lie with the lenders.
“We see the main risks being to commissions and inconsistencies in lenders’ credit processes, [as well as] inefficiencies with credit assessors requesting over-the-top documents and lenders’ poor processes impacting service levels,” he says.
As the pair navigate these risks, the group’s main focus will be on upskilling its members and ensuring they become more efficient and productive. Tan says the business will continue to use technology to deploy its services and help achieve better outcomes for its members.
The group uses Zoom for its training sessions, Facebook for some of its discussions, and Dropbox for storing and sharing templates and processes. It also has a CRM that offers checklists and task tracking, as well as Connective’s Mercury Nexus, which makes it easier to review files with mentees.
“Technology can help us leverage our time,” Tan explains. “If used properly, automation can help brokers save time and money. We use it a lot to help us measure how our business is going, by collecting data and running reports.
“And we use the technology – reminders, calendars, etc. – to ensure our processes and tasks are completed on time, every time. It also ensures consistency with the customer experience.”
What mentees say aboutmasters broker group
Andrew and Mario have been invaluable to my progression in mortgage broking. I truly admire the guidance and support I receive when looking for answers. I would highly recommend them to any brokers willing to seek mentorship under them. It’s just not technical skills advice you get from them, but the guidance you get ensures you are successful in your mortgage business, providing great outcomes for your customers and for yourself.
Andrew and Mario have been very supportive in assisting me to get up to speed very quickly in my broking career. Their experience and prompt advice has also assisted me with some difficult loan applications. Plus their knowledge of the back-end systems has been very useful with making sure the loan processing process was smooth.
I am based in Sydney, but I never felt that my mentors are in Melbourne, as Andrew and Mario are both very supportive and reachable at any time. They go above and beyond your expectation to serve you.They are not just mentors; they are very successful industry experts to guide and to walk on the path they are walking.
