What is a mortgage broker?
A mortgage broker is a finance professional who can help you get a loan.
What is a financial institution (bank)?
A financial institution (or bank) consists of savers and borrowers. Banks collect savings from personal and business accounts and uses these funds to lend to borrowers. Banks must pay interest on the funds that they collect from the savers. Borrowers pay the bank interest as per the lending rates applied to their loan.
Larger banks may take deposits from overseas sources effectively importing money and exporting the interest they pay. Smaller banks, like Cairns Bank, only take domestic deposits, keeping the interest we pay right here in Australia.
What does a mortgage broker do?
A mortgage broker will work as a liaison between a customer seeking a loan and a lender/bank..
It is important to note that brokers do not have access to all the lenders in the market.
What does Cairns Bank do?
We want to hear your story and adapt our loan products to suit your needs. We have our own loans officers who handle your loan from enquiry through to approval settlement and beyond. All the decisions for your loan are made here in Cairns, making the whole loan process stress free. We listen to your story and adapt our loan product to best suit your needs.
Mortgage brokers time of approval
Mortgage brokers do the work of assembling your loan application and submitting it to the bank for assessment and approval. They do not make the approval decision themselves so there is uncertainty as to the loan assessment/approval process.
Recent experience is that brokers are suggesting finance clauses in contracts be set at 30 days (normally 14 days) because of delays in getting approval decisions. This is stressful and risky – if the loan is declined you may have little or no time to secure finance within your timeframe.
Cairns Bank time of approval
Our loans officers are with you from the start and are right beside you through the whole process of assembling your application, interview, loan documentation and approval. Since we control the whole process, this helps us speed up the approval and can be in as little as 48 hours.
How does a mortgage broker get paid?
Obviously, mortgage brokers are not working for free.
The most common form of payment is a commission paid by the banks for selling their loan product. How much a broker gets paid often depends on who they refer the loan to as commission rates vary between lenders.
While it is less common, some brokers charge the borrower a fee instead, even less common is a combination of both methods.
Does Cairns Bank work on commission?
All of our loans officers are salary based and do not receive commission. We believe this is a fairer system because our loans officers are not pressured to close the deal just to get paid (or to get paid more). It also helps us provide loans that are suited to your needs, not ours.
Key Takeaways
- Brokers do not have access to all lenders.
- Brokers generally get paid on a commission basis.
- Brokers do not control the whole approval process, it depends on the individual lenders and their approval requirements and timelines.
- Cairns Bank only has our own products. These are flexible to fit the needs of our customers.
- We control the whole process so it can be quicker and generally more flexible.
- Our staff do not receive commission incentives based on volumes or the amount of the loan.