Hundreds of would-be advisers sign up

Hundreds of new mortgage adviser are completing introductory courses that would allow them to start work in the industry, but not all end up in front of clients.

Thursday, June 29th 2017, 9:30AM

by Susan Edmunds

David Greenslade, Strategi managing director

Strategi said it had had 476 advisers through the Residential Property Lending strand of the New Zealand Certificate in Financial Services, level five, over the past year.

At the PAA, learning and development manager Angi Mann estimated it had another 70.

All of the banks, with the exception of ASB, require advisers to have completed an introductory qualification before they can be accredited.

“I suspect that the only reason new entrants are doing the residential property lending strand is because the lenders require them to have attained this as part of being accredited with the respective lender. If the lenders were not being prudent in this regard, then it is likely we would still see people being in one occupation yesterday, getting their name on the FSPR today and being able to sell mortgages to the public tomorrow,” Strategi managing director David Greenslade said.

He said it seemed most of the new-entrant mortgage advisers who joined the industry were planning to be self-employed and either setting up their own business or operating under a larger group, with their own business.

“Those who join the banks are recruited directly by the banks and go into their mortgage call centres. These people are trained to meet bank rules using bank products and are not normally exposed to the New Zealand Certificate in Financial Services. I suspect that the banks would recruit at least as many new mortgage advisers as what we see coming through our courses each year.”

Mann said some would drop out before making it into the industry at all, although she could not say how many. “Some attendees aren’t intending to be mortgage advisers but might be working with one and trying to get the background information so they can be good support for them.”

She said sometimes Australian advisers did the course so that they could help people who wanted to buy property in New Zealand.

Greenslade said it was hard to pinpoint how many people dropped out of the industry or did not start after they had the qualification.

“Anecdotally, we know that many new mortgage advisers struggle to get clients and make money in the first few years," he said.

"This will be even harder now with the raising of LVRs and the increased difficulty in obtaining a mortgage for clients. The recent Australian budget will also have implications here in NZ with mortgage advisers - the banks may reduce commissions plus focus more on high-quality loans rather than growing their books. Therefore, a larger number of mortgage advisers are likely to find it significantly tougher over the next two years. One of the mortgage adviser sectors that has been successful in recent years is Chinese advisers working with Chinese clients who wish to purchase investment properties. The ability to remit funds from China has got harder and this market has slowed considerably. Therefore a number of new Chinese mortgage advisers might end up struggling unless they have a large network of Chinese clients they can sell to.”

Tags: mortgages