Guide verico
independence maintained Victoria’s Mortgage Depot is one of the latest independent brokerages to join Verico. Vernon Clement Jones finds out why from President John Zieman
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John Zieman
hen Mortgage Depot signed up with Verico in January, the B.C. independent brokerage had had 21 years of doing things its own way. That isn’t expected to change, says the 25-year veteran at its helm. “I’m not Verico as far as the public is concerned,” company president John Zieman tells CMP. “We remain Mortgage Depot. A number of things led us to Verico – a certain level of collective bargaining, access to technology, in terms of website, marketing matters and database mining, and training for agents, which is a challenge for independents. But what was really attractive about its model was the autonomy it afforded us in terms of branding and marketing. I would not have joined a group that would have caused me to re-brand.” As an original partner in the Victoria-based firm, Zieman relied on his own skills, industry knowledge and shoe leather to get out there, track down leads and grow a book, now one of the largest in the region. That heavy lifting was accomplished without the benefit of one of the industry’s large super-broker names pinned to his own. “We’ve now built up a brand that is recognized and has its own identity,” he says. It has also built up its own following, now able to draw in prospective leads for Zieman and his team of agents and brokers. That won’t be compromised by the decision to join Verico, with Mortgage Depot continuing to market itself under its name. The parameters of the new relationship address the concerns of independent brokerages that have already developed name recognition under their unique brands but have grown to the size where turning to a super broker has the potential to significantly add to those successes. Despite its existing size, Mortgage Depot was, with Verico’s collective originations volume, able to grow the number of lenders it can turn to for top-tier status, says Zieman, pointing to a key factor for many independents attracted to the super-broker model.
Still, it wasn’t Zieman’s overriding concern, the broker pointing to an expanding sales force and the need to provide the kind of high-level training and professional development his team is now accessing through Verico. “Some lenders are moving away from the volume bonus model to what in many, many cases is an individual volume bonus metric,” says Zieman, a former VP of mortgages in the banking sector. But being part of a network like Verico has also allowed the brokerage, focused on the middle-to-upper-end of the A market, to hand off some of the small but significant duties that have very little to do with originating mortgages, freeing up time and resources for that primary work. “Verico has given us access to newsgathering capabilities, allowing us to post new feeds to our website for clients,” says Zieman. “It’s just one of the benefits that attracted us.” B.C.-headquartered Verico is among several competing networks that have beefed up CRM and other software programs for brokers, a way of retaining their existing brokerage partners but of also attracting new ones. But increasingly networks are looking for ways to answer industry concerns about the educational limitations of agents. Calls for tougher licensing standards and testing have challenged super brokers to deliver go-at-yourown-pace training, accessible outside the classroom and anytime of the day. Its newly launched “Verico Academy allows agents to access continuing education tutorials through a combination of videobased and one-on-one personal coaching approaches, covering everything from business development to coaching and accountability,” says John Kelly, chief operating officer for Verico. “It’s not enough to work harder. In this environment you have to work smarter and we’re committed to continuing education and setting the standard for our industry.” Those kinds of tools are harder for independents to access outside of a broker network, argue fans of the super-broker model, yet are key to growing the expertise of agents in a slow market. While he remains an independent thinker, Zieman agrees. CMP
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