PROFILE / JAYDEN VECCHIO
CHARGING
AHEAD
Jayden Vecchio settled more than $60m in loans in his first nine months as a mortgage broker. Now 16 months into his new career, MPA finds out how he’s become so successful so quickly
Discovery Finance’s Jayden Vecchio first came to MPA’s attention when he was put forward to take part in this year’s Young Guns feature. During the course of our conversation he revealed that he’d managed to settle more than $60m in loans in his first nine months as a broker. A few months down the line, and with that impressive achievement still 32 | JULY 2014
fresh in our minds, we tracked Jayden down to delve further into how he has managed to build up such a successful business so quickly. It may come as little surprise that one of the key drivers of Vecchio’s early success has been a solid grounding in the lending business, thanks to several years spent working in the banking industry. He worked at two of the country’s non-majors, Bankwest and Macquarie, for three to four years each, and he believes the experience he picked up while working at the banks has been invaluable in helping him set up his own brokerage. “I think they’re a good breeding ground for brokers and people coming into the industry, because they do teach you a lot of the right ways of doing things, and even some of the complexities and intricacies of financials and complicated deals,” Vecchio says. He adds that he received good in-house training during his time with the banks, and is now making the most of the broker-specific training that lenders offer up to the broking community. “The banks usually have regular training monthly, and even offsite days, which is something that’s obviously discretionary for brokers, but it’s something that they really believe in, and I believe in as well,” he says.
SETTING THE TONE Vecchio’s disciplined approach to work has helped him hit the ground running. He explains that making sure he had the right structure in place was key to preparing for his initial client meetings as a broker, to set the tone for the months ahead. And 16 months into the job he’s now in the process of drilling the correct procedures into a new recruit that he’s brought into the business. “We’ve done some role playing,” he explains. “It’s just getting the simple things right, being detailed and making sure you get everything the first time.” To that end, he says it’s standard practice to send the client an email outlining the documents and information that will be required before the first meeting. “Usually we pretty heavily prequalify people to make sure no one’s wasting anyone’s time,” he says. Of course, it’s all well and good having a rocksolid client process in place, but if the leads aren’t coming in, then it won’t be used to its full potential. So, as a new broker, how did Vecchio manage to build up a solid client base off the bat? Once again,