5 Efficiency Principles To Streamline Service Delivery

I hope this article provides inspiration or insights to help your realise your own potential so you too can operate a broking practice that provides you ongoing professional and personal reward.?

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Improving internal efficiencies can make life easier for you and your clients and here we will look at some foundational principles to do exactly that.

Mortgage broking is becoming increasingly challenging.?

Over the past few years, we’ve seen that the amount of work for brokers and their teams increase significantly. Handling per file used to be around 8+ hours per file, and now it’s closer to double that amount!

There are a number of reasons that contribute to this including more compliance, BID notes, changes to lender policies and inconsistencies with the client journey. All of which can impact approval and the client experience and can blow out settlements, which means many of us end up not getting paid for another 30 to 60 days.

The good news is that there are things you can do to influence the process.??

In this article, we’ll talk about the five principles that will help you improve filing efficiency. This will make life a little bit easier and more rewarding for you and your team.

The 5 Principles

Principle #1 - Design Your Sweet Spot

If you’ve ever played tennis, golf, hockey, or similar sports, you know that there’s always a sweet spot to hitting the ball. When you hit this sweet spot, you create the most impact and improve your chances of scoring.?

The same principle applies to your filing system.?

You can design a sweet spot that allows you to be most purposeful or impactful when it comes to the core element of your process.

Now, there are three key things to take note of when designing the sweet spot of your filing process. These include:

1. Documented process
2. Dynamic checklists
3. Right toolkit

If you have a clear process that everyone can follow, good tools that can assist you in being consistent with the process, and the right checklists your team can follow…

Then you have successfully designed a sweet spot that maximises your filing efficiency.

Principle #2 - Build As You Go

Broker Engine Founder Craig Vaughan once said:?

“All deals are 80% the same. It’s the 20% differences that’ll kill you.”

Essentially, this means that most of what you’re going to do would be fairly repeatable. However, your filing process needs to be flexible enough to deal with the remaining 20% that would be challenging or different.?

In other words, you need to be prepared to build sub-workflows in your system to account for varying scenarios that would come up in your practice.

Principle #3 - Standardise Handover

Knowing the benefit of having a standardised handover process and actually having one are two different things.? After all, who wouldn’t want a clear, repeatable, and structured way of handing files over to their team, right?

But I’ve seen a lot of inconsistencies around this particular part of the process. Many incomplete files have been handed over.? Or it is some scribblings on an iPad or notebook without having a clear template to follow - which means its harder for the team to decipher, which ultimately causes delays.

Remember: A repeatable and simple-to-follow standardised handover process is going to make life easier for you and your team.

Principle #4 - Create Checklists for Consistency

Ideally, most filing systems should have the flexibility to get bigger, depending on the requirement of certain tasks or milestones. As such, there needs to be clearly laid out checklists that you and your team should follow.

Now, some brokers would say: “Well, I’ve got it all in my head.”?

I have no doubt that they do.?

But here’s the thing. If you can improve your team’s adherence to certain principles and tasks at any given stage reduces the likelihood of errors. This increases the chances of getting quicker lodgements, approvals, and results for your clients.

Which, in turn, assures a better customer experience.

Principle #5 - Discuss the Journey

No two clients are the same. What works for a more experienced client won’t exactly work with a newer one.?

Experienced clients might not need a rehash of the steps you both need to take to get the file settled as they’ve gone through the process before.? In fact, some of them might only need email correspondence to be updated on the loan status.??

But that’s not always the case with newer clients. It’s crucial for them to understand your overarching process.?

Helping them understand what the journey looks like for you both will build their confidence in you as their mortgage broker. It’ll also ensure you’re on the same page and diminish confusion. Plus, you’ll make it easier for them to be active participants in the journey… rather than someone whom you need to keep coaxing along to give you the necessary documents.

In other words, a little extra time invested up front should reduce the total time ongoing.

Streamline Your Process Today

By understanding and practising these principles, you can enhance your service offering and your workflow.?

And, keep your team and your clients in mind when designing a more efficient system. That way, you can create a process that truly benefits every stakeholder in your broking practice.

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Want to grow your broking practice?

I’m James McCracken, Broker Growth Strategist, where for the past 10 years, I've coached brokers to grow their practices with structure and consistency.

Here are further ways I can help:

Speaking & Presenting: Would you like a tailored presentation for your conference or PD Day so your brokers can grow their volumes??Send me a LinkedIn message to request my speaker kit.

Deal Flow Plan:?Download a personalised plan that pinpoints growth inhibitors and options for operating with more structure, efficiency and consistency.?thesuccessfuladviser.com/dfp/

Ultimate Broker:?For established mortgage brokers only, this service provides guided support to accelerate settlement volumes, improve operational efficiency and reduce worth hours.?

Book an initial call?to see if there is potentially a fit.

To your continued success!

James