New broker network in town

A new broker network was recently launched and it hopes to offer big bank services.

It may be in its early days, but Broker Financial Group already has hundreds of brokers and is set to take on the rest of the industry.

“Basically we’re coming out with a lot of auxiliary products, we’re trying to revolutionize the mortgage industry in a lot of ways -- there is a new network in town,” Jason Singh of Broker Financial Group told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “Technically that’s the realm we’re playing in but I really want to go into the market share of the banks – I don’t want to go after other (network’s) agents, but if you were to put it out there the other networks would consider us direct competition.”

The network currently boasts between 300 and 400 agents and is hoping to reach 1,000 in the near future.

It plans on establishing 20 offices within the first six months in Ontario before expanding across Canada. Brokers who join can choose from two model – a flat-fee model and a 95/5 split, depending on how much autonomy they desire.

“We want to back independents up if they want to stay independent and give them access to our back-end support.”

Others, meanwhile, can franchise their own Broker Financial Group brokerage.

And the network has already lured brokers from across the industry to join.

“Some of them are still with their current brokerages and they are transitioning over. A lot of them are with a lot of the other networks … some may be Invis, some may be Centum, some may be Verico,” Singh said. “Some of them are independents as well who will be joining our network to capitalize on some of our auxiliary services.”

Singh, who is the current broker of record, has been in the business for ten years and he believes diversification is the key to winning market share from the big banks.

“The auxiliary products we are bringing into the market: insurance partnerships, there’s going to be financial planning; we’re going to handle everything a bank does,” he said. “We’re going to try to add that to the whole mortgage broker experience.”