In the “old days”, getting a loan was perhaps a simpler task. You went to the bank, you asked for an appointment with the manager, and got yourself booked in. Then you came back at your allotted timeslot, presented your business plan, and if the manager liked the idea, then they gave you the money you needed. You walked in twice, you walked out once with a loan – as simple as that.
In the modern day, though, it’s not quite so simple; banks don’t just hand out money on a whim. Especially since the crash in 2008, public access to financial decision makers has become less and less obvious, and more and more obfuscated. Nowadays, if you walked into a bank and asked to talk about loans, you’d probably get a confused look and a request to call a phone line. Even then, you’d be lucky to even get 2 minutes with the right person after spending an hour on hold – just enough time to book in a half-hour a month from now; when they’re free, of course, not you. For the average finance punter, the decision-makers at lenders have retreated behind a wall of checklists, phone queues and general bureaucracy. So how can you get access to them?
That’s where the modern broker comes into the picture. One of the key benefits of having a professional broker on your side is, well, that broking is their job. You’ll only be dealing with a lender once, or a handful of times at most under normal circumstances. A broker deals with them every day of their career – and in that situation, you get to know the right people in the right places. Any broker worth their salt will know exactly who makes the decisions at various lenders across their area. Their doors might be closed to the average punter, but a broker can re-open them for you. Bank managers may have disappeared from the public eye, but that doesn’t mean that with the right tools on your side you can’t still get their attention!
