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Mortgage broking is a well-trodden path for accountants looking to diversify their business and offer their clients a holistic range of financial services under one roof.
An Accountant’s guide to diversifying into mortgage broking
17 March 2022
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3 minute read
Find out how to build a broking business that compliments your existing service offering and sets you up for financial success.
Accountants and mortgage brokers are among the most trusted professionals in Australia, developing highly effective working relationships with their clients. Mortgage brokers are considered a key partner by accountants, as they make a referral to a broker to look at their clients’ home loan and financial requirements.
When brokers and accountants work together, they provide clients with a one-two-punch of navigating their finances and finding the appropriate lending solutions for them. This is an extra layer of convenience for the client, as they are only dealing with one organisation that they can trust to meet all their financial needs.
Hear from our top performing brokers and accountants how they make the fit between accounting and mortgage broking work to their advantage.
Download our guide and learn more about the strategies to offer your clients the services they need under one roof
In our free Accountant’s Guide to Mortgage Broking, we explain the three pathways that accountants are taking to obtain a share of the growing mortgage broking industry, with brokers currently writing over 66% of all home loans in Australia*.
Building an adjacent broker business
In our eBook, we detail why broking and accounting are a natural fit, especially in recent times. The COVID-19 pandemic has kept accountants extremely busy as they navigate a wave of government initiatives that help their clients.
While this has created a spike in workload, it has also further solidified the role of the accountant as a trusted adviser.
Switching careers
Tom Atkinson is a Sydney-based chartered accountant who made the move into mortgage broking in 2015 as part of a larger plan to build a diversified financial services business.
In our eBook, Tom details how easy the transition from accountant to broker was for him:
“Being an accountant for ten years, I was very familiar with numbers and ways to improve someone’s business. Most of our accounting clients are SMEs, so I was always looking at financial statements and balance sheets. Switching to broking from that perspective was straightforward,” Tom explains.
Tom also gives some expert advice for accountants considering a career in broking:
“You need to ask yourself why you want to be a broker. For me, it wasn’t a lifestyle decision or because of the money. As a business, we wanted to better service our clients.”
Working with brokers
Not all accountants are eager to simply drop their existing career and take up a new one.
But working closely with a mortgage broker, hiring a broker or creating a joint venture (JV) are great ways of expanding your service offering.
Melbourne-based broker Michael Taipi has a formal JV in place with an accounting practice, a relationship he inherited from another broker.
“The accountant was introduced to me through a retiring broker who wanted me to manage the relationship. He was finishing up and had an existing relationship with them and made the introduction,” Mr Taipi says.
For accountants considering taking a similar path, Mr Taipi says both parties need to be clear from the beginning that the client outcome is the number one priority.
“Joint ventures only work if that is the case. If your sole focus is to make money it just won’t work. You need to be on the same page and focused on client outcomes,” he says.
If you’re wanting to become a broker or explore a broker business relationship, we can help
If you’re interested in our free guide to mortgage broking for accountants, then why not contact us for more information about how we can support you on your journey.
Remember you can always reach out to Them Lam, our National Manager of Recruitment and Partnerships for a chat here:
*Source: MFAA’s quarterly survey of leading mortgage brokers and aggregators July-September 2021
