Speaking at a luncheon in Sydney yesterday, Mortgage Choice chief executive Michael Russell said his group currently has 15 advice franchises with 19 authorised representatives – with an additional 13 franchises having passed the approval stage.
“Our challenge is recruiting quality advisers into our model. This is a problem we didn’t think we’d have – we’re ready to go but we don't have the capacity to cope with the enquiries we’ve got,” he said.
Mortgage Choice has a television commercial and additional consumer advertising ready to roll out, said Mr Russell.
“We can’t hit the button on that yet because we don’t have the footprint capacity to be able to [deal with] any consumer enquiries beyond our existing customers,” he said.
The existing financial planners within the business are being booked out four to eight weeks in advance as soon as they “hit the ground”, said Mr Russell – which he admitted was a “nice problem to have”.
New advisers who join the group are hit with an "avalanche of warm leads", he said – but they are not expected to refer back to the mortgage broking side of the business at this stage.
Mortgage Choice Financial Planning general manager Tania Milnes said she is spending a lot of her time interviewing financial planners who are looking to join the network.
But with with unemployment still sitting at relatively low levels it is a “challenge to find the right people”, she said.
Mortgage Choice Financial Planning is also letting a lot of planner candidates “find their opportunities elsewhere”, said Ms Milnes.
Two-thirds of the division's financial planners have been recruited from salaried positions within banks and financial advice firms, she said.
“For the big established businesses that have very strong brand names and a lot of existing clients, it's probably not for them. And that's okay … we're happy to build a business from scratch,” she said.
