The move makes the brokerage a 'fully national organization', founding partner says
This article was produced in partnership with Vine Group
Fergal McAlinden, of Canadian Mortgage Professional, spoke with Vine Group and its Montreal team on the brokerage’s move into the Quebec mortgage market
Vine Group has launched in the Quebec mortgage market, opening a Montreal office led by three experienced mortgage professionals in a move the company’s founding partner Hugo Dos Reis says reflects its expansion into a fully national organization.
The Quebec brokerage, officially known as Groupe Vine Courtage Hypothécaire, will be helmed by Dilip Laurent Nayar (pictured top, centre), Matthew Picciuto (pictured top, left) and Shaun Dupont (pictured top, right), executives who gained vast experience in the banking space with RBC before making the switch to the broker side.
The trio set out in the broker profession because it allowed them to provide clients with a wider array of mortgage options than the bank – and Picciuto said that the client-focused approach matched neatly with Vine Group, whose tagline affirms that it’s “in the people business – we just happen to do mortgages.”
“Before we started with Vine, we had an agreement between the three of us that with anything we were going to do, we were always going to take a really client-centred focus,” he told Canadian Mortgage Professional. “Coming from our background, we knew that any kind of success we were going to find would only be if we can do what’s 100% in the best interest of the client.
“Vine felt like it was the right fit for how we envisioned our business to be, considering how they built out their culture being a people-centred business.”
The growing complexity and unpredictability of the mortgage market in 2023 also served as key reasons for the team’s switch to the broker side. Nayar said against that backdrop, it was important to have access to as varied a range of lending solutions as possible to serve clients’ increasingly complicated borrowing needs.
“We felt that having access to so many lenders would mean that we could find better, more creative solutions for the clients that we have,” he explained. “So we’re feeling pretty good about the state of the market after our cross over. It’s challenging, but it’s nice to have options.”
Helping brokers focus on what’s important
Of course, no banker-to-broker transition is without its challenges – and with Vine Group well-versed in the art of helping bankers make that switch, that’s proven no different in the early days of the Quebec office.
“It’s a very different world on the broker side because with the bank, you’re operating in a silo – you become an expert in all of the rules and policies, but now all of a sudden you’re in a world where you have so many different options,” Dos Reis told CMP.
Vine Group supports former bankers through the transition through technology and a structure that provides support and guidance with the nuances of the dealmaking process.
“Where we aspire to create value is first of all with our Hub: saying to them, ‘Just give us as many notes about your client as possible, do this KYC writeup so we know what your client wants, get all the docs ingested into the Hub, and it will produce a bunch of different options for you,” he said.
“And that process that we’ve developed allows them to be accustomed to our processes that service any sort of lender out there and hopefully create value in their ability to go out and do what they do really well, just building relationships with their COIs and clients and so on.”
Dupont said a “big selling point” was Vine Group’s ability to allow its agents and brokers to focus on their strengths – relationship-building and dealmaking – rather than getting weighed down by administrative tasks.
“We felt that over the years that to some extent we had stepped away from the set portion of the business – meeting COIs, getting to know our clients, and trying to grow our business,” he said.
“We spend so much time in front of the computer doing applications and data entry, but that’s not what our strength is. Our strength is working with people and building relationships, and that’s what we wanted to come back to.”
For Nayar, the fact that Vine Group has long prioritized a documents-up-front process also makes it a strong fit for the Quebec market, which traditionally operates on that basis.
A big step forward
Dos Reis said Vine Group’s expansion into Quebec would prove a huge boost to agents and brokers not just in that province but beyond, with Vine Group mortgage professionals across the country now able to make deals in the Quebec market and vice versa.
It marks the latest step in the brand’s rapid upward trajectory, one that he said would never stray from its focus on bringing in quality agents with strong prior experience in financial services.
“We’re extremely proud to be able to say that we’re truly national by having access to the Quebec market,” he said. “What’s great is not only can these guys do deals in Quebec, but they now have access to go anywhere in the country without any interference in their process and vice versa.
“If our agents in Toronto have a client who wants to buy a property in Montreal, we have a network there. So we’re obviously very excited to be in Quebec, and it was something that we’ve been working on for years. This is a missing piece of our puzzle.”
Vine Group is a national mortgage brokerage based in Canada.
