By Zac Masters | July 9, 2020
To use a basketball analogy, a good financial advisor should often run point guard for your personal finances. This means that they are the main playmaker, they decide the plan of attack moving forward. A good point guard is essential in having a championship calibre team, but it’s also important that the other positions are filled with experts in their fields such as accountants, lawyers and mortgage brokers. Today we’re going to focus on the latter and discuss why I think it is important that people should see a mortgage broker.
A good mortgage broker will be able to offer you advice far greater than just finding you the best rate. Getting a loan can be confusing, especially if it’s your first time. Offset accounts, fixed vs variable, redraws… the list can go on in terms of different terminology. A good broker will be able to help you navigate through these different features and find out what is important for you. Often, I feel that getting the structure and features of your loan right can be more important than the rate alone.
They have access to a range of different lenders and rates, they may even have access to rates that you are unable to get due to the size of their business. You as a consumer have access to these lenders as well but you likely don’t have the software to go and compare these as quickly as a mortgage broker does and it will often leave you spending a lot of time comparing different lenders when you could have a broker do it for you far more efficiently.
A majority of the time the mortgage brokers are actually paid by the lender for finding them business and do not charge an extra fee on top to you. Commissions are often a dirty word for people, especially following on from the royal commission but now most lenders pay a very similar commission and no decent mortgage broker would or should ever focus on the commission alone, rather looking at what loan and solution is best for you.
Similarly to a financial plan, you should be reviewing your loans on a consistent basis. Situations change, interest rates change, and products change so you need to be making sure you are reviewing these to ensure you have the best solution possible for you. Having a good mortgage broker should mean that they are proactively reaching out to you. It also means you will have an expert to call if you ever have any questions rather than having to sit on hold to a bank or other lender to get an answer.
If you would like to get in contact with a mortgage broker, please shoot me a message and I would be happy to do an introduction to one of our trusted business partners.
Zac is a qualified financial planner at Pekada and host of the Wealth Collective Podcast. Living in Melbourne, Zac has six years of experience in advice and specialises in wealth accumulation and protection strategies. He loves to keep his finger on the pulse for the best strategies for wealth accumulators looking to build and protect their wealth tax effectively. Zac has been featured as an expert in Money Magazine.