Become a Switch Finance Broker
Join our team and enjoy next-level support, mentoring, marketing and sales tools and a ‘no handcuff’ contract.
Transcript: Introduction by Switch Finance Founder, Ray Dib.
0:11
I’m Ray Dib and I have been in the mortgage business since 2004 but didn’t start Switch Finance until early 2015. Well, my motivation for starting Switch Finance?
0:26
I love the industry, but when I started, I initially entered into a franchise and that changed me in there for nearly ten years, I couldn’t get out. Once I knew that a franchise model really wasn’t for me, it was too late, so I had to see that time out; so, I was caught up within that franchise. Once I was able to get out, that’s when I decided to start Switch Finance. I wanted to start my own brand, my own business using the experience I learned along the way. So, the concept of our business being a plug and play or hub and spoke model that came about when I first decided to venture out of home.
You know, it was very difficult working from home once you started getting busy. I was doing all my own processing. I had two young children, and they couldn’t even talk to me because I’d be locked away in the office and I’d be sometimes working till 11:30 midnight from morning because not only are you seeing clients writing business, then you’ve got to do all that processing, follow ups and it’s getting exhausting; so I needed to hire a staff member and I didn’t want staff and come to my home. I thought I need to hire an office, so I’ve now hired a little office in Southport. I’ve hired a full-time staff member and I start realising, hey, I’ve got more overheads than my folding now warrants. I need to bring another broker on board. So eventually we had our first brokered join and that was Eghard [van der hoven] and, and as you start to grow, you start to realise I need to keep growing to make the numbers make sense.
2:13
And because I had to grow, I realised there must be a lot of brokers out there that are doing the same thing as me and we’re duplicating costs and have made absolutely no sense; so then I’ll just thought, why can’t we just have a hub and spoke where we have shared costs, have higher staff that can support us, one brand rather than duplicating the same costs over and over again and, and having a lot of wastage. And that’s how I’ve ended up where I am now.
Currently [2023] we have seven brokers including myself and we have a total of five support staff. It’s actually a joy to see how the brokers who have joined their business have evolved over time, especially the ones that have come out of totally unrelated fields, but have, you know, worked hard during their two years of mentoring and really strung themselves into the industry. And you could just tell that they love what they do. And it’s very rewarding, especially when they start to build their volume and start to get some settlements away and start earning money out of it and it starts to become real to them. And it’s really great to see that enthusiasm on their face.
3:38
You know, we’ve got Marco who’s up in Mackay, and he was a registered nurse, joining us. That’s an obviously very different industry, but he had a number of investment properties, so he was very, very fluent in property and lending because of his own personal experience. And he did a financial planning course, so a diploma, and realised that financial planning wasn’t something he loved, but that certainly helped him in his quest in mortgage broker – having that diploma in financial planning as well.
4:21
Joshua, he’s, he came from being a a chef and he was, he’s our youngest broker and he joined a stroke from being a chef and really threw himself into the industry and he just took to it like a duck to water. It was amazing, and he is just flourishing after two years. It took me probably four or five years to get to his level of volume and performance when I started, so that was great to see.
4:47
Eghard, of course, he’s has a lot of experience in the finance industry and leaving Aussie [Home Loans] and coming on board with us, he found out that mortgage broking could be a lot more enjoyable without having such stringent confined rules when dealing with a bigger firm like Aussie. And we also have a broker that’s joined us that was already a broker with our current aggregator as a credit representative, but was working from home and was really struggling with the lifetime balance. And he’s really happy that he’s come on board now he’ll be able to write more volume and work less, and he’s actually done the numbers and told me he’s financiallybetter off on our 70:30 split than he was being a credit Rep of the aggregator. So yeah, it is enjoyable watching them grow in our business.
And just recently my daughter has been on board and is now qualified broker as well. So that’s great to see – and don’t ever forget about Paul. Paul actually was a friend of mine for many years. He’s also a client of ours; him and his family and lot of his relatives. He referred to us and he has a lot of experience in the construction industry. And one day he was, he got out of his job, he was in and I said “Paul you should be a mortgage broker, you are so knowledgeable in this area, you will be brilliant.” And he said, yeah, I might do that. I think his wife actually said, “yeah, Paul, get out of the house and do something”, and he has taken to a like a duck to water. He’s actually overseas at the moment, still riding business while he’s overseas, I think in the Greek Islands. He loves this industry and the fact that you can pretty well work from anywhere if you have a good phone connection and good internet connection. And obviously having that support back home as well.
6:53
Well, supporting the brokers, where do you start? So we support the brokers, number one, we have a brand and I believe we have a very good brand, a very strong brand with a great reputation as you can see by our reviews. But we also have a tremendous support team and we spend a great deal of time educating them and making them as the best they can be, and basically they are, I suppose, the gatekeepers for the broker to make sure that the data integrity is great because brokers can do things on the fly, but our support team, they’ll make sure that the integrity of the data is spot on. When they’re serving identification or supporting documents, they will then go through the brokers opportunity and make sure everything is spot on. There’s someone here to take phone calls on behalf of the broker, someone here to, to respond and follow up their clients, follow up the lenders, post settlement follow ups and making sure the clients are happy with.
7:54
We also have the my marketing package from our aggregated that’s afforded to all of our brokers, which provides newsletters, birthday texts to the clients on behalf of the broker, RBA emails. There’s so many things, I can’t think of them all right now, but yeah, it’s a multitude of support there. I suppose one of the biggest ones, we have a weekly meeting with the brokers where we talk about wins, losses or scenarios you need help with. And well, I keep learning from these meetings, you know, because you’ve got young Joshie online with finance and coffee all the time and he’s following what’s going on there. And, and you’re hearing of niche policies that I haven’t even heard of yet because I haven’t been able to read all the emails that come through. So we all, no matter how experienced or inexperienced we are, seem to take away something from those meetings. And once again, it’s just great having a group of peers that you can bounce off. Luckily, you know, I befriended a couple of business development managers of various lenders who would help me out. Even though it was part of a franchise group, there was not a great deal of support there. And they were taking a decent clip off my income of 20%, but not providing much support for that. You still have to do all your own back office, all your own processing [in a franchise group]. And that’s when I realised, why am I in this franchise, you know? So, yeah, I, when I say I wish I could, if I was starting again, join a group like this [Switch Finance]. Yeah, absolutely!
9:36
I love doing the analytical work of lending, I love helping the customer, I love the interaction with people. Do I enjoy the back office end of things? No, I don’t enjoy it; I don’t not enjoy it but I’d rather be doing just the broking and have somebody else worry about all of the, you know, the mechanics of the business and running that, you know, that can be quite stressful and quite time consuming. But I’m here by default; as you build the business, you find out – hang on, I mean, I can’t get out of this now, oh well, I may as well keep making it bigger so I can eventually float to the top.
10:17
If you’re a broker out there, you’re on your own. I get it. I was there for many years and it is a lonely place. I encourage you to explore all the all options that are out there for you. Have a chat to us. We might not be the fit for you. You might not be the fit for us, but just explore the options. Don’t just work at home on your own. It can be lonely. It can be very time consuming doing all that back in yourself and the end of the day, life short. We need to find the joy in life. You need to be able to go on a holiday with your family and not worry about your phone keep ringing because you got some dramas and settlements and what not. Yeah, reach out, have a chat. As I said, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
What is required?
- Complete minimum Certificate IV or Diploma in Finance and Mortgage Broking (Diploma may become mandatory soon but recommended to be done as an up skill a year or two after the Certificate IV with industry experience).
- Set up trading structure (Company or Trust with corporate trustee) – NOT sole trader, partnership, or trust with personal trustees.
- ABN and GST registration.
- Professional Indemnity Insurance (PI Insurance).
- External Dispute Resolution (AFCA membership).
- Become member of an accepted industry body MFAA or FBAA (commercial and asset finance brokers via CAFBA).
- MFAA Initial Compliance / AML or FBAA Certificate.
- 100 points of ID and current Resume
- National Police Report (no older than six months).
- Individual credit check (no older than three months).
- Mentor Details if applicable.
- Business cards (I will arrange for you – first 1,000 free of charge!).
- Mobile phone, laptop, or PC (highly recommend multiple screens, the more the better!) with Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium (highly recommended).
Full Back-Office Support
by Switch Finance
This is not a throwaway line but includes a dedicated and well-trained support team to assist with data entry and integrity, file management, saving of documents, application forms, compliance assistance, ordering of valuations, and basically handling the pipeline once the deals have been submitted through to settlement and beyond.
Having this support mechanism allows our brokers to submit more applications and earn more than if they were working on their own receiving 100% of the commission, furthermore you can go on holidays and have a real rest knowing that while you are way there is a team here that can take calls and manage your clients until your return.
Estimated running costs
(all excluding GST)
- PI Insurance would be initially approx. $800/year.
- Switch Finance – Monthly Compliance Fees $100 (subject to adjustment if costs change). External Dispute Resolution (AFCA membership) $65/year.
- Industry body membership MFAA Initial Compliance / AML or FBAA – $540 or $465/year (CAFBA $192.50).
- Aggregator Associate fee $150/month (covers CRM software access).
- Business cards – my shout for the first 1,000 cards!
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard $17.20/month (minimum requirement) or Microsoft 365 Business Premium (highly recommended) $30.20/month.
The ongoing tax-deductible costs of running your own business (not including mobile phone and internet costs which you would most likely have anyway) is under $5,000 per year!
Experienced Ongoing Support
by Switch Finance
- Ongoing Mentoring, Training & Support with the benefit of learning and discussing scenarios or challenges with the other brokers in the team providing a diverse spread of knowledge to draw from.
- Folio Pro (our loan structure template/sales tool).
- Office/meeting room when required.
- Market leading CRM software specific to our industry.
- No “handcuff” contract – our credit rep agreement simply mirrors that of Connective’s.
Marketing Support
by Switch Finance
- Fully maintained website, company email address, brand management, social media marketing, marketing video creation.
Thanks to our great reputation, years in the industry and ongoing marketing efforts, the business does generate and receive leads which are farmed out and shared amongst the brokers free of charge. This is simply an added benefit and does not form any part of our formal offering and is not part of the 30% split that Switch Finance receives from the brokers’ commission. - Professional assistance with artwork if wanting to market using the logo/brand.
- Connective My Marketing Package available for all brokers (Monthly newsletter from you to your database, birthday SMS, RBA Meeting emails plus email merge templates) .
Eghard van der Hoven Testimonial
Hi, I’m a mortgage broker. My name is Eghard van der Hoven. I’ve been with Switch Finance for the last five, nearly six years.
I met Ray through a mutual friend. I had a good discussion with him, had a good feeling about him as a person at the business and it’s been a great decision because I think since then Ray’s business has grown quite a bit. There’s a number of brokers in the group as well as very good support staff, because at the end of the day, as a broker you need (I think it’s very difficult to work on your own), y ou need a sounding board, you need people to you can discuss issues with and you need good support and all of that is provided by Switch Finance.
Well, I’ve always been in finance my whole life, in stockbroking for large part of my life and in funds management and then the last bit in mortgage broking for the last of nine years. And as I said, the last five to six years with Switch Finance.
I worked basically on my own in a large aggregator. The support was reasonable, but you don’t have the same interaction that you would have, or that I currently have, within Switch Finance.
So I think as a broker it’s, it’s very, very important, especially if you’re a newer broker as I was at the time, to have that support is critical.
And at the end of the day, you don’t always have all the answers. You need the experience and the expertise of someone who might have had a similar problem with similar issue and, and found a solution.
Because all the lenders are slightly different. They all have different policies.
We deal potentially with 40 odd lenders, not that you deal with so many, but there’s there’s a myriad of, of different opportunities and it’s nearly impossible to have a good understanding of all those policies.
So it’s just much easier if you can say I’ve got this issue. Has anyone dealt with it? And then coming up, I dealt with Linda XY and Z and they found me a solution.
Yeah, I think in broking, obviously you get paid in two forms; you get paid an upfront, then a trail. Obviously the trail takes a bit longer. Once you establish that trail it can become an important part of of your revenue. But it’s important to keep that trail, you’re going to look after your clients that you don’t lose them. So yeah, broking is a good revenue generator for an individual.
So the other advantage of being in a group such as Switch Finance is what we’re doing today; it’s part of the package you’ve got, you’ve got a brand that you that you work under and the brand is established. It’s been there for a while. So all of those issues, again, it’s the support that you have not just with other brokers, but with the larger infrastructure in terms of brand awareness, marketing, all of those issues, I think as I already said is the support that you get. For me personally, I wouldn’t want to do that [marketing] so the advantage is you’re still responsible ultimately for the loan right from the beginning to the end but at some point the support team, (it’s a great support team) can really assist you and free you to actually go and do other deals and other solutions for find other solutions for other borrowers and other clients you may have.
If you are working on your own, as a lot of brokers do, some people might like it, but but for me, and then I think for people there must be many of people saying well this is not ideal, something like Switch Finance, I think, will solve that solution where you have a group of people and an infrastructure that is readily available and I would strongly suggest that you think about that and have a discussion with the Switch Finance.
Eghard van der Hoven
ACCREDITED FINANCE BROKER
Dip FMBM MEcon
Credit Rep. No: 458583
Providing our clients with over 3 decades of experience, a wealth of knowledge in the financial services sector and access to a vast network of Australian lenders (traditional and the non-conforming), Eghard can offer solutions you may not have considered before.
Eghard is highly professional, customer service focussed and really knows his stuff. He proudly boasts of many repeat clients, from sole traders to large companies, who confidently return time and time again, and happily recommend his services.
0409 881 817
Joshua Oates Testimonial
Switch Finance Testimonial – Joshua Oates
My name’s Joshua Oates, I’ve been a broker at Switch Finance here for about 2 1/2 years.
Well, prior to becoming a mortgage broker, I was a chef working in fine dining and Italian traditional cooking, and then COVID came about, the hours dried up. I bumped into my mate Raymond Dib here at a sushi restaurant of all places. We got chatting, the rest is history.
Well, COVID gave me the opportunity to do so. But look, cooking’s hard, this is much more personal, something where I get to put a bit more of my personality into it, and that’s just a whole lot of fun.
My favourite thing about being a mortgage broker would be putting the pieces of the puzzle together like a jigsaw. A client will come to me and say, Josh, this is my position, this is where I stand, and I need to put those pieces in the puzzle together. I couldn’t imagine doing what I do without the support from Switch Finance here.
By having the support staff here, it allows me to go and do what I like to focus on, which is networking with new clients, building rapport and focusing on the overall game there. And they can come back and do a lot of the other more monotonous tasks or other things that I don’t have to necessarily spend my time on.
So it’s quite a symbiotic process once we all put it together, I think. I’d like to think I’ve come leaps and bounds since joining Switch.
I’ve had a lot of very good advice from some sound brokers here at Switch. We all lean on each other when we’ve got different scenarios or different deals on our desk here, and if I was doing it by myself, I’d still be working on some of those clients from years ago. There’s a wealth of knowledge here at Switch Finance and it’s fantastic to lean on, especially when you’re taking on higher volume, which is what I’m trying to focus on here, and you can work out those deals much quicker rather than spending too much time on something.
It’s fantastic being able to pick some of the more senior, experienced brokers brains when you’re working with the banks, the banks very rarely give you a solution to a problem. They say this is our criteria, it’s up to you to sort it out. When you’re working with other brokers who have been doing this for years and years, they can very quickly qualify where a deal needs to go, how it needs to be packaged and who may be suitable, who may not be.
So it saved me a lot of time, it saved the clients a lot of time and it helped me get into this line of work very quickly.
I could not imagine doing this job on my own. I know a lot some other brokers out there, a one man band so to speak, and they’re doing the transactions right from speaking to the client on day one all the way through to settlement and post settlement. What Switch Finance offers is time back to a broker. As I said, I couldn’t imagine doing it by myself. I’m actually planning a trip to Brazil later this year and the support staff are going to be looking after a lot of those transactions whilst I’m away.
Of course I’ll oversee whatever’s going on in my absence, but Switch basically gives me the freedom to head overseas, say bon voyage and know that my clients are being looked after. The best part is whilst I’m away I can still take on new business whilst the support look after some of the other admin sides as well without interrupting my holiday.
I would say to any broker out there who is currently a one man band, do you want more time and want to write more volume? Join Switch Finance.
Joshua Oates
FINANCE ENGINEER
Cert IV F&MB
Credit Rep. No: 531372
A passionate and enthusiastic Gold Coast local, Joshua believes that the best mortgage brokers are, like him, well rounded, with broad life experience that stretches beyond just the scope of finance credentials. Wise beyond his years, he prides himself on being a genuine people person, understanding real-world issues and needs.
Joshua is a creative, kind soul with a life-long passion for drumming (the drummer in the band Jeenie). After leaving The Southport School, he completed a Bachelor of Business and Journalism at UQ before becoming a classic Italian trained, qualified chef. With his innate ability to switch from right-brain creativity to left-brain analytical thinking, Joshua seamlessly transitioned from cooking to mortgage broking, obtaining a Certificate IV in Finance and Mortgage Broking – and he excels at it!
His personable demeanour combined with lateral thinking has allowed him to unlock his clients’ true ethos and goals whilst assessing their financial positions, leading to more satisfying outcomes for existing clients and new.
0458 191 594
Ray Dib
FOUNDER, PRINCIPAL & FINANCE ENGINEER
Dip FMBM LREA
Australian Credit Licence No: 469024
Having been a self-employed business owner since 1988 and in finance since 2004, Ray has extensive experience in finance, lending and investment portfolio structure. Ray understands the needs of a business and thinks ‘outside the box’ when appraising finance for his clients, resulting in an extremely high success rate and better customer outcomes. This and his signature loan structure diagram software have him being referred clients from around the globe.
Ray is friendly, customer service focussed and speaks in layman’s terms, which clients appreciate. He has been a regular guest speaker at conferences for various property investment groups and has written articles for various property investor magazines.
0421 621 028
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