PEOPLE
IN THE HOT SEAT Virginia Graham, director of Model Mortgages, talks about a strange interaction she had in her early broking days with a client dripping in diamonds, how best to handle jarring situations, and one of the biggest misconceptions about the business
What was your most memorable deal? I was working at Aussie Home Loans at Westfield Bondi A Junction when a tanned woman dripping in diamonds came into the office requesting a loan for $8–$10m. She said she could only talk to me because we both had blonde hair and she thought I would be more reasonable. She said she needed a loan for the next day. When I asked her what she wanted the money for and how she planned to pay it back, she told me to mind my own business. I told her it wasn’t possible to do what she was asking and she became enraged, saying, “Do you think I’m poor? I’m rich. Of course I can pay back the loan; $8m is nothing to me.”
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What did you learn from this experience? I’ve never had such an unreasonable customer. It made me A appreciate how wonderful and reasonable most of my customers are. I have also worked with many wealthy individuals and none of them have ever gone on about how rich they are. Any broker in this position needs to try not to laugh or wonder if they’re on some kind of surprise ‘you’ve been had’ television show. Just remain calm. I think it is one of the highlights of my early broking years as it was so surreal.
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What do you think is one of the biggest misconceptions people have about the industry? I don’t think most people understand the amount of work that A goes into structuring loans and getting them approved and settled. The idea of a self-service online loan is almost laughable because it shows that the people who think this is a good idea clearly don’t understand what brokers do. The other common fallacy is that customers somehow pay more by using brokers. Lenders pay us instead of their loan departments, and we cost less. That’s why we make even more sense. Why would you do something yourself when someone else who is more experienced can do a better job for free for the customer?
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What’s something different, unique or innovative that you bring to your broking business? Definitely our technology. Our process is partially automated A and it saves us a lot of time and data entry. It also makes things easier for our customers. AB
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