"It starts with what I believe" - Kim Horan

Kim Horan is no doubt an incredibly experienced finance professional, who has worn many hats during her career. Formerly working in the motor industry, where she wrote car loans, Kim ventured into the mortgage broking industry, where she now operates a full-service brokerage covering residential, commercial and home loan protection needs. 

As a franchisee at Aussie St Mary’s, Kim is both a broker and a broker’s mentor with a tenure of over 13 years.

Mortgage broking made a lot more sense to her, as she states, the motor industry can be very transactional and there was not a lot of interest in what was right for the customer. Moving across to mortgages really allowed Kim to work on something that was more about relationships and helping people achieve their goals. 

An important part of Kim’s business and her complete offering is Aussie Mortgage Protection Plan (MPP). In a recent episode of The Adviser's Elite Broker Series, Kim discussed her beliefs and opinions on MPP, along with how and why it’s become an integral component in her business. 

“It starts with what I believe”

As a firm believer in offering mortgage protection to her clients, Kim has protected 244 Australian home and property buyers from financial hardship. Although, at the very beginning when Aussie first partnered with ALI Group as their loan and mortgage partner, Kim admits to being “anti-insurance”.

Kim had come from the motor industry where a heavy focus was on driving insurance sales. So, when her sales manager at the time contacted her about MPP and asked if she would make it part of her offering, Kim stated she didn’t come into the industry to sell insurance, she wanted to be a mortgage broker. It was when her sales manager questioned how she can be sure her clients do not want the protection, she decided she would discuss it during her next appointment. 

“I went into my next appointment, which was a young couple wanting to buy their first home and to be honest, I really didn’t go into it well prepared. I was only doing it to appease my sales manager. Once we started talking about it, the couple had a genuine interest in it, and they responded right away because they thought it was really important. It was from that point I realised, it wasn’t fair for me not to give people the opportunity to do that, because it’s their family and it’s their home and it’s their financial situation. So, from there I’ve made sure I’ve offered it every time”.

Facing challenges head on

Throughout the Elite broker podcast, Kim candidly discusses her business and processes. More specifically, when Kim opened the Aussie Store in St Mary’s and hired staff, they became increasingly busy and therefore needed to re-asses their process with mortgage protection and how it could remain an imperative part of every client’s end-to-end experience.

“When we moved into the store, there were challenges because I had staff working for me and we got busy, so we had to sit down and work out the process which made sense and followed that. We mention it [MPP] in the appointment, so they know we do offer these products. When we do our loan document sign up which, I do myself for every client, it’s during this appointment, we then have a full conversation about it and what it protects them with and the total costs”.

20% uptake

Kim’s settlement numbers for MPP are an impressive 20% of her total clients settled. A testament that when clients are educated about protection, they are confident in making an informed decision.

Kim says her high uptake shows how people are genuinely interested in protection and how the conversation triggers them to go and explore what cover they already have in place, if any, and to make sure what they have is adequate to cover the risks of taking out a large debt. 

“If the outcome of the conversation is people are making sure they are adequately covered, then I feel like we’ve done what we should be doing for them”.

The Adviser's EU Study Tour

ALI launched a campaign during the winter months called ‘Complete the Process’ . The campaign’s aim was to help brokers achieve a complete process when it comes to the protection offering. Fundamentally, the focus was educating brokers on the importance of recording a clients’ decision whether it be yes or no to taking out the protection. 

During the campaign, Kim was one of the most diligent and responsive brokers, seeing her being awarded a spot on The Adviser’s EU Study Tour in Dublin, Ireland. 

The Adviser’s EU Study tour brought together brokers, lenders and aggregators from around Australia and Europe, where delegates were able to network, learn and discuss challenges commonly faced in their own personal mortgage and finance market. 

“The tour was really amazing, I wasn’t expecting to be there, which was pretty amazing in itself. Something I did pick up over there was the commitment they do have to insurance. There does seem to be a very different focus on the role that it plays in protecting the customer and it does, I think, place a lot more value on it”.

Kim’s key understandings and learnings from the tour were how in Ireland and more broadly the United Kingdom, mortgage protection is massive. 

“In Ireland, lenders make it compulsory that you have mortgage insurance before you write a loan for them. In the UK it’s a much bigger proportion of the brokers business – 70% of brokers in the UK write insurance as well”.

Continue learning more about Kim

You can access the entire Elite Broker podcast episode with The Adviser editor Annie Kane and Kim Horan right, here.

Are you an ALI authorised broker yet?

If you would like to find out more about becoming an ALI Group Authorised Representative or if you had any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our friendly team today. 

About Emma Flanagan

Emma is the Senior Marketing and Communications executive at ALI Group. After completing a Bachelor of Communication with a Major in Journalism, Emma spent a couple of years living, travelling and working abroad before making her way home to Australia. Now, with firm roots back in her home town of the Central Coast in NSW, her and her husband just bought their very first home with the help of their mortgage broker. Now, Emma is here to help FHBs just like her by providing informative and educational content and to keep them abreast of what’s what when it comes to buying, refinancing and protecting themselves and their family from financial hardship.