Community outreach brings rewards

Moving to another country, experiencing different cultures and navigating a path to a new career as a successful mortgage broker is no easy task, but Mortgage Choice franchisee Smita Vira has shown it can be done.

Conscious of the opportunities she has been able to take advantage of but also of the barriers that migrant women can face, the Adelaide broker is heavily involved in community programs, and reaches out to help and inspire others.

Originally from Mumbai, India, Vira and her husband and two young daughters migrated to Australia in 2008. After working in the family’s shoe business in India, they decided to move away from the hectic pace of Mumbai, opting for a better family life and greater career opportunities in Australia.

“We wanted to experience something different,” Vira says.

“When you talk about diversity, women are treated a bit differently in India. To start a career you have to fight more than normal … where I came from, our cultural background, for women to start their careers, they have to go through many battles.”

Adjusting to life in Australia wasn’t easy at first. Vira says her family knew no one. “I remember in the first one and a half months, my husband booked tickets to go back to India almost three times,” she says with a laugh.

While Vira says she didn’t experience culture shock, the family had to adapt to a different way of living, without the household support they were used to in Mumbai.

Despite having worked in business in India, she says they “started from scratch” in Australia. Vira worked in fashion and jewellery stores before securing a job at Commonwealth Bank in 2011, where her love of maths and strong customer service skills came in handy.

She started as a teller and then moved into different roles at CommBank, including home lending, SMSF and business banking. Vira says the skills she picked up at the bank were invaluable when she decided in January 2020 to “start her career in broking”.

Vira set up her own mortgage broking franchise in Adelaide. Now part of Mortgage Choice, her franchise covers the northern Adelaide suburbs of Prospect, Campbelltown, Enfield and Klemzig.

She says her work in the community helped her meet a lot of people, which was helpful when it came to building her customer base as a broker. Vira is a follower of guru Pujya Shri Rakesh Jhaveri and is involved in supporting the work of his charitable foundation, the Srimad Raj Chandra Mission.

Every week, the Adelaide Group runs a spiritual session in Adelaide so people can listen to the words of the guru. “In this crazy world of stress and anxiety, it helps you to cope with a lot of things,” she says.

The group helps provide hot food for the homeless in partnership with Adelaide organisation Cos We Care every Saturday.

Vira is also a sound healer and runs her own not-for-profit organisation, Divinage, which conducts regular activities, including weekly sound healing sessions and monthly mental health programs featuring mandala art, pranayama (breath control exercises) and yoga. It recently supported Catherine House (pictured below), an organisation in SA that helps homeless women.

“Divinage also buys products from overseas from not-for-profits and sells them here to create employment for tribal women,” Vira says. “Funds raised from some of our activi- ties are donated to local charities as well as to support kids from the state of Gujarat in India – enrolling them in school and paying their yearly fees.”

One of Vira’s biggest fundraising events was the staging of an Indian play, Yugpurush, in Adelaide in 2016. She says the sold-out event raised funds to help build a hospital in rural India.

“A lot of people in the community knew that I was behind the play and were aware of my activities in the community, so that helped with my branding and recognition as a broker.”

While a lot of people from the local Indian community attend Vira’s programs, she says word of mouth means that more Australians from different backgrounds are attending, including colleagues and other people in the mortgage and finance industries.

Vira says it’s important as a broker to build connections with the community you serve so customers can see you offer more than just a transactional relationship.

“For anything you do in life, trust is a big factor. [Customers] can be assured that the advice I give is not biased. If it’s my daughter sitting in front of me versus my client, if I’m doing something for my daughter, I’ll 101% do it for my clients.

“This is the kind of attitude and customer service we provide, and it encourages people to put their faith in you.”

Vira says there’s a large Indian community in Adelaide, and it’s beneficial that she’s from Mumbai, a multicultural city, with many different languages and customs.

“I can speak almost eight languages, which enables me to connect to different people and deeply understand their culture. It helps a lot; people refer others to me. That’s the biggest part – the referral business,” she says.

“Some of our customers call me ‘baji’, which means sister in Hindi.”

While people often know Vira from her community activities, she says it’s not about “talking the talk but walking the walk”.

Many of Vira’s clients are women from different cultures. “As soon as they see that you are a woman mortgage broker, that trust is different. I get a lot of Afghani Muslim women who come to me for advice.”

Vira says in her community there are very  few female brokers. “I strongly promote diversity in this space, and we need to get more women of all cultures taking up a career in broking. There are so many amazing women with so many skills, but they don’t always get the platform or exposure. Every woman has a different story and a different struggle.”

In February, Vira was a panellist at a Mortgage Choice event run by the Aspire program (pictured below), which supports and promotes female talent in the broker network.

At the latest Aspire event held in Adelaide in July, leadership strategist and behavioural scientist Shadé Zahrai spoke about diversity and female empowerment.

“It was amazing to hear her. We need more women like her to encourage other women to come forward,” Vira says.

In July, Mortgage Choice won the Diversity & Inclusion award for its Aspire program at the 2023 MFAA National Excellence Awards. The award recognises the work of the teams and brokers involved in shaping the Mortgage Choice Aspire program and efforts to boost representation of women in the network and broking industry.

To learn more about Aspire, the latest events and the exceptional women in the Mortgage Choice network, go to mortgagechoice.com.au/ franchises/aspire.