Matchbox Finance

Striking the match

Launching a brokerage in a pandemic

Ishbir Singh Rakhra Director Commercial & Bridging Matchbox Finance

Opening any business in 2020 would have caused a cocktail of emotions from anxious anticipation, to elation, to disbelief and yelling profanities at the stars, to a now silent, solemn fire of determination. And I am not an exception to this rollercoaster. Without divine knowledge, or a degree in epidemiology, no one saw this to be the outcome of 2020. For better or worse, we pressed on with opening Matchbox Finance knowing that if we can make it through this firestorm of global proportions, we will withstand anything.

Square one

Our humble origin story began with over a decade of running our East London estate agency. Tired of blocked sink tenants and over eager vendors who believe their home is worth 50% above market value (sigh), we re-routed our path to land a development agency which in turn brought us to launching Matchbox Finance.

Notwithstanding the current madness, opening any business is a daunting task when considering the breakneck evolution which all industries are generally experiencing. From website creation to marketing and CRMs, the breadth of knowledge needed has grown considerably. It is possible to outsource to relevant service providers, but they all come with a price tag which a fledgling business can ill-afford. So, we immersed ourselves in website design, analytics, campaign management, tech advancements and anything that could give us a leg-up. We turned to any affordable resource including industry associations, YouTube, Skillshare and any other repository of knowledge we could find.

Beginning at an NACFB roundtable, I was able to discuss, unreservedly, about our personal and business ambitions, and with their excellent guidance, we navigated the early days of compliance and setting up. Although technically ready, we faced the dilemma of either becoming directly authorised or joining a network. And for us, joining a network outweighed the costs at this early stage. Although compliant, our inexperience meant early difficulties around learning lenders’ criteria and inefficiencies chasing rates. By leveraging our networks’ criteria knowledge, we became more confident, effectual, and allowed more time to focus on quality client interactions and business growth.

Enter COVID-19

I didn’t want to mention it, as I am similarly bored with the incessant commentary, but I would be amiss had I failed to mention the permanence of its impact. We have all experienced difficulties in contacting BDMs, extended call wait times and a volatile marketplace, so I won’t bore you with a diatribe about it. However, the announcements from Schroders and PwC to allow staff to continue working from home indefinitely, has created an alternate reality of the workplace architecture. The question is, how do we mere mortals respond to this growing, irrevocable change to the fabric of working life?

Maintaining a business purely on telephony alone is ill-advised. We experienced a glaring difference in the quality of initial and ongoing interactions with BDMs and clients alike, between those with whom we have ‘Zoomed’ and those with whom we have only maintained telephone conversations. Effort was employed to develop active visual engagements to build stronger and longer lasting relationships. We have chosen to embrace the Zoom culture by hosting virtual meetings throughout the case lifecycle. To this end, it is important to invest in the technology. Zooming from laptops tend to give unflattering viewing angles, so an eye-level set-up has helped us to stand out.

This new communication format has a great by-product. It has raised the accessibility of professional advice traditionally reserved for the wealthier clientele. To physically host a meeting with the clients’ broker, solicitor, and tax advisor would have been prohibitively expensive for most. However, with the wide adoption of virtual meetings, that collaborative advice is not only effortless to arrange but affordable too. We have actively sought to team up with fellow professionals to cooperate and create new touchpoints and added value for our clients.

True business innovation is progressively difficult and expensive to establish, regardless of the industry and this exceptional year we have all endured. Could I have changed any of it? No. The only meaningful action we can exhibit is how we choose to flow within our own realities. I hate to regale you with clichés of adaptation and the power of change, but it has never been more pertinent when considering the effects of the recent act of God. By our singular human nature, we are inherently adaptive; however, embracing technology is merely to embrace a tool, it is how we use it which will define our greatness. And us brokers are pretty great. “ By our singular human nature, we are inherently adaptive; however, embracing technology is merely to embrace a tool, it is how we use it which will define our greatness