Excellence through innovation

BROKER NETWORKS

Excellence through innovation

CENTUM’s Chris Turcotte tells CMP how the company, recently crowned Broker Network of the Year at the Canadian Mortgage Awards, is driving its brokers’ success through new ideas and integration

FOR CENTUM president and COO Chris Turcotte, one moment stood out in the aftermath of the company being named Broker Network of the Year at this year’s Canadian Mortgage Awards. Minutes after CENTUM’s victory was announced, Turcotte checked in with the company’s longtime director of operations, Caroline Rapson, to get her reaction to the win. Instead of celebrating, she was immersed in a Zoom call with new franchisees, fielding questions and providing information.

For Turcotte, it was a perfect encapsulation of what CENTUM is about: going above and beyond to provide assistance and outreach to its community of brokers.

“It was so poetic to me,” he laughs. “The one who had stuck with CENTUM through absolutely everything misses the big moment because she’s going the extra mile for one of our new franchisees. I’ll remember that over anything else that happened – because in that moment, it was an exact representation of what we’re about.”

Turcotte says the victory also served as a validation of the company’s journey over the past several years – one that has led to profound change and a radical rethinking of its approach to the industry and the network model. Part of that process involved prioritizing the needs of agents and owners, putting them front and centre in CENTUM’s transformation – so Turcotte says the company’s win at the CMAs was theirs as much as anyone else’s.

“It’s really special for us that our agents and owners have something where they can be proud about getting out and recruiting – it gives them that brand pride,” he says. “We have franchisees who were with us on day one, 19 years ago. They can genuinely say that they’re at the best network in the industry right now.”

The value of integration That commitment to doing things differently has been at the forefront of the company’s approach in recent years; innovation and new ideas have spurred its success. Turcotte says everything the company has built is based around putting the broker first, an ethos that’s not going to change anytime soon.

It also means carefully aligning with agents and brokerages whose values and ethos reflect CENTUM’s own: integrity, trust, excellent lender relationships, exceptional service and leadership in the industry. That focus on being the most authentic broker network, rather than the biggest, has led to nearly a tenfold increase in business, even as the network has reduced its total number of agents from 2,600 to around 2,100.

One of the most striking elements of CENTUM’s success has been its focus on technology. Its in-house digital agency allows brokers to request custom marketing, from

bus benches to billboards. Instead of keeping marketing staff on payroll or retainer, brokers can access quality marketing directly through the network.

CENTUM has also successfully deployed the marketing and administrative firepower of the other brands at the Charlwood Pacific Group – Real Property Management and Century 21 – an approach that brokers can expect to see more of in the future. In fact, while the company is naturally interested in growth, Turcotte says its priority for the

“Ultimately, the only thing that matters is that those brokers are happy. If they’re proud to be here, that means we’re

doing our job right” Chris Turcotte, CENTUM

A look inside CENTUM’s Vision2021 virtual conference

coming years is integration: using those brands to create even more opportunities for CENTUM’s mortgage professionals.

“When we started on this journey, I noticed that we had more data entry accountant staff than some brands had employees,” he says. “We realized that we can over-deliver on value if we pool our resources, and then that value can be executed through the other brands, too. We have the ability to deliver an unrivalled, unprecedented value proposition because of the way we’re designed.”

That process is likely to empower CENTUM offices to incorporate a Real Property Management arm into their existing brokerage, allowing them to offer property management services to investors in addition to a mortgage – a development that would give them the ability to generate monthly revenue and also provide the opportunity for repeat business down the line.

“The likelihood of you getting that business again is almost guaranteed,” Turcotte says, “and every single property in your property management portfolio has a mortgage attached to it that will always have a renewal date or always need to refinance. When one of those revenue properties is refinanced, the equity is usually pulled out and another property is purchased. That means that the brokerage has just automatically generated another mortgage, and for its property management business, it’s automatically generated another property.”

In short, that increased level of integration would give brokerages the chance to generate a much more business – potentially three transactions instead of one.

Bringing people together The week in April when CENTUM was named Broker Network of the Year at the CMAs was an eventful one for the company; Turcotte describes it as “the coolest week of my life.” Just days before the CMAs, the company brought its landmark VISION2021 virtual conference to the screen, allowing mortgage professionals to chat, network and even dance through a virtual avatar they could steer through an enormous digital event venue.

The event reflected the company’s determination to bring together mortgage professionals even during the grim realities of a global pandemic; Turcotte says the aim was to host a large event in a fun, innovative way that gave attendees the feeling of really being there.

“We didn’t want to just do a Zoom call,” he says. “We said to ourselves that we didn’t want a one-sided conference where you just sit and listen to one person talk. At our conference, two avatars could go find a table or sit under a tree and just talk.

“We wanted to see if we could create something that just helps the human spirit at a really tough time. It was really cool to see our team set out to do something special and give people a reason to smile. It was awesome – and the feedback we got from the industry was amazing.”

That achievement was a perfect summation of one of CENTUM’s core goals: to cultivate relationships rather than mere transactions. For Turcotte, that attention to people is why the success of the mortgage broker community is so important to the company – and what made its Broker Network of the Year award all the more meaningful.

“Ultimately, the only thing that matters is that those brokers are happy,” he says. “If they’re proud to be here, that means we’re doing our job right.”

CENTUM BY THE NUMBERS

182

Number of franchised mortgage offices

2,100+

Number of mortgage professionals

3

Canadian Mortgage Awards won in the past three years (Broker Network of the Year in 2021; Digital Innovator of the Year in 2019 and 2020)