Think about that one. A bookshop rolling out and selling its No.1 enemy. If you think diversification is a dirty word, the world will soon be leaving you behind…
Any mortgage broker should by now be a protection expert. So what else?
Well, you are dealing with financial advice for clients – so that includes pensions and investments. Are you aware that from 1 October this year it became mandatory for companies to auto enrol and contribute to pension schemes for all employees? Did you know that initially we will contribute up to 8% of earnings – but in Australia (where this system really works) this figure is 22%? This represents the most enormous opportunity for you. That is a lot of dosh and a lot of companies needing help.
We are at the beginning of a new economic cycle, history, data and money printing suggests a huge uplift in property prices over the next 20 years. How are you rolling this out to your clients as your proposition? They do after all like property! No need to sell them Cape Verde nonsense when there are fabulous property opportunities literally around the corner from you and them in the UK.
You get what you go after.
Now I don’t want to go into Californian psycho-babble here and the law of attraction…but… if you go chasing tricky cases – guess what you are going to end up with? Likewise small cases or, heaven forbid, the sort of mortgages you really don’t want to have anything to do with. This one is hard to follow through – but think about who you want to be dealing with, really, and make a commitment to work hard and find those sort of clients. It will take a while, sure, but once you have momentum with this you’ll end up with a great and loyal client base. Lovely.
Which leads us to London. There just happen to be a lot of businesses, people, property and above all, money in London. If you are going to work in the financial game, then why not make life a lot easier for yourself, chuck everything in a bag and jump on the train. Really. You only have to be average to be well paid in London. It is not right, it is not wrong, but it is a fact.
Dominic Hennessy is principal at Just Us Mortgages
