If you’re a broker specialising in areas such as mortgage and insurance, then now is a great time to diversify your product offering to include commercial lending too. A quarter of brokers’ current customers own small businesses or are self-employed, and SMEs account for the biggest share of the business lending market.
With access to working capital being a fundamental problem in today’s business climate, over a third of small businesses are failing due to cash flow issues that could have been prevented. If you want to make a real difference for Australian SMEs whilst increasing your clients, opportunities, and income, then expanding your services into commercial lending could be the best thing for you.
What is a Business Loan Broker?
Brokers connect clients with services that best suit their needs. A business loan broker, therefore, assists people to obtain the best business loan for their scenario. They do this by connecting with other financial professionals, including banks, non-banks, and alternative lenders.
How Can a Broker Expand Their Services?
We mentioned earlier how it’s a great idea for brokers to diversify their work to cover a whole range of financial services. To give you some ideas, we’ve included a list below of the many different types of brokers:
- Business loan broker
- Commodity broker
- Customs broker
- Information broker
- Insurance broker
- Intellectual property broker
- Joint venture broker
- List broker
- Mortgage broker
- Pawnbroker
- Real estate broker
- Stockbroker
- Office broker
In this article, we’ll be concentrating on what we know best: business loan brokers, or more specifically, diversifying your current broker services to include commercial lending.
The Benefits of Diversification into Commercial Lending
There are many benefits that come with a broker expanding into commercial lending. These include:
Boosting your client base
Instead of constantly looking for new clients, you can now work on delving deeper into your existing relationships.
Becoming a services provider
If a client has come to you looking for a home loan, there’s a chance that they may own their own small business and could even require business funding within the near future. Additionally, they may wish to come to you for an insurance policy that suits their needs.
Rather than seeing yourself as offering a very narrow service (i.e. just home loans), you can now market yourself as a services provider – i.e. someone who is there for their clients during some of the most vital stages of their lives.
Avoiding fluctuations in demand
Like all businesses, brokers aren’t exempt from dreaded seasonal fluctuations. The housing market may take a turn, resulting in less people purchasing property. This would then result in fewer people seeking out your services as a mortgage broker.
By diversifying your services, you can prevent this from happening, as you should always have a steady flow of clients with various needs.
Developing better relationships with clients
When you only offer one very specific service to your clients, it’s more likely that the relationship will be over as soon as they’ve received what they needed. By offering other types of brokerage services, you dramatically increase your chances of seeing them again in the near future.
Additional income
This one might seem obvious, but it’s certainly a very good reason to increase the broker services you offer. More services can easily boost your client base, therefore resulting in additional income for your business.
Reasons to Partner with Lumi as a Business Loan Broker
If you’re interested in working with clients to obtain business loans, then you’ll be pleased to hear that you can easily do this by partnering with Lumi. Here are some of the main reasons why brokers are signing up as introducing brokers with us:
Broker Portal
Track your leads, see status updates, and view your commissions all in our easy-to-use, online broker portal.
Support
We’re constantly working to support all our partners and we tailor and build our solutions to suit your business and your customers’ needs. Whether you’re looking at taking that initial step into commercial lending, or simply want to expand your existing product offering, Lumi is here for you.
Competitive Commission Structure
Thanks to our high customer satisfaction and return rates, our partners can expect ongoing commission for each and every loan funded by Lumi.
Trust
We’re a proud member of the AFIA Online Small Business Lenders Code of Lending Practice, giving both you and your clients the confidence that they will be dealt with the highest levels of integrity and transparency.
Access and Speed
Our application and underwriting process is the fastest in Australia. The application can be completed in less than 5 minutes and the loan is funded within the hour.
What Next?
Ready to take the plunge into commercial lending? Partnering with Lumi is both fast and easy. Simply enter your details on our website or call us on 1300 00 LUMI to begin. We look forward to working with you!
