iscover 
Called Arlee, the app allows mortgage brokers to stay across their clients’ future property plans, alerting them when they begin exploring major financial decisions such as buying, selling or renovating.
Developed by Williams Landing mortgage broker Nathan Hawes, the platform gives each client their own app, built around a financial position certified by their broker.
Clients can set goals and explore different scenarios, including buying another property, selling, renovating or starting a family, with their broker notified when they begin considering a change.
The platform is also connected to data analytics company Cotality, meaning clients can see their property valuations in the context of their broader financial position, as reported to the broker.
Data is stored in Sydney with multi-factor authentication on the device, the app and portal. Hawes also said that Arlee is in the process of obtaining ISO 27001 certification.
Hawes told Broker Daily that the platform was designed to give brokers an opportunity to reconnect with clients at the point they were making decisions, rather than finding out after the fact.
“So when you call, you’ve actually got something to say,” he said.
“Not ‘how are you going?’ but ‘I noticed you were looking at a property. Let’s talk about it.’”
From clawbacks to client connection
Hawes developed Arlee after experiencing the financial impact of unexpected commission clawbacks in his own broking business.
After several clients sold their properties over November and December, the clawbacks landed together in February, leaving Hawes facing an unexpected hit to his business.
“I’ve got staff to pay. I’ve got rent to pay. I’m sitting there thinking, how do I do this?” he said.
“And I didn’t see any of it coming.”
He subsequently interviewed more than 10 brokers and found the same concerns were being raised, with some describing the experience of opening their commission statements as “physically sickening.”
“It’s not the clawback itself. If you know it’s coming, you can prepare for it. It’s the not knowing.”
Brokers speaking to Broker Daily have called out the existing clawback system, calling it “fundamentally unbalanced.”
Hawes said traditional approaches to maintaining contact with clients, such as quarterly calls and regular emails, had not necessarily helped brokers stay informed about their plans.
He said he had previously contacted a client after a clawback, only to be told they had never received an email from him, despite his records showing regular correspondence.
“That’s when it clicked for me. Contact doesn’t mean connection,” he said.
Hawes added that as competition ramped up, means to connect with clients post-settlement was becoming increasingly important.
“When I started, there were 14,000 brokers. Now there’s 22,000 brokers. And just because 81 per cent of all mortgages are written by brokers, it doesn’t mean that it’s not competitive. It’s even more competitive. So the need to retain clients now is more prevalent than ever before.”
Client decisions happening outside the broker relationship
To better understand what was driving clients’ decisions, Hawes said that he also gathered feedback from more than 100 customers.
He said the responses challenged the assumption that interest rates and mortgage repayments were the main considerations occupying borrowers.
“As brokers, we’re always talking about interest rates. The clients weren’t,” he said.
“They’re worried about whether they can buy their first home. Whether they can upgrade because the kids are running out of space. Whether to have a baby first or buy first. When to sell, when to renovate.”
Hawes said these conversations were often happening without brokers being involved, meaning clients could have already made significant decisions by the time they returned for lending advice.
“By the time they get to us, they’ve already made the decision. We’re the last to know,” he said.
“They didn’t leave because of the rate. They left because we weren’t in the room.”
Testing the platform in his own business
Hawes began developing the idea in 2020, drawing on his engineering background to build property plans showing clients how many properties they could potentially acquire over a 10-year period.
He tested an early version of the platform with 70 clients last year before launching Arlee and beginning to onboard other brokers, which has now been up and running for around six weeks.
Having trialled the platform in his own business, Hawes said it had saved him around 10 hours a week, while creating additional loan opportunities and helping attract new customers.
“I was able to rescue deals and create new ones, because I knew what my clients wanted to do,” he said.
“I was in the room.”
Hawes said much of the technology being developed for mortgage broking was focused on improving back-end processes, such as loan processing and automation, while less attention was being paid to the relationship between brokers and clients after settlement.
“I built this because I felt what every other broker feels when that statement lands,” he said.
“Every broker I interviewed felt the same way. I wanted to fix it for my own book first, and then for them.”
[Related: ING clawback reforms welcome, but ‘model is broken’, say brokers]
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?Make Broker Daily a preferred news source on Google.
