"It's important to sort the wheat from the chaff, the marketing spiel from the reality, when it comes to the technology being offered."
However, in the increasingly shortened time between season end and season beginning, while actual games are in short supply, there is often a media frenzy around transfer activity with players looking to extricate themselves from seemingly ‘water-tight’ contracts and clubs either looking to offload before the player can leave ‘on a free’ or trying to bring in the next big stars demanded by their fans.
In football, the ‘Bosman ruling’ changed everything in terms of allowing players to leave clubs at the end of their contracts for free, so now contracts tend to be longer, they tend to be renegotiated regularly, and there is almost something of a sense of failure if the player reaches the end of a contract and moves on without a fee being paid.
Contracts within the network sector are often talked about at great length, albeit not in the same depth as in football, because there is sometimes a perception that Principals have their AR firms under draconian terms which make it incredibly difficult for them to leave and to move on.
In my opinion, that argument tends to be over-egged but it’s certainly the case that if an AR firm signs up for a five-year contract then they’re going to be expected to see out that term. However, perhaps unfortunately for AR firms who might wish to move on, they are not going to be ‘signed up’ with a big ‘transfer fee’ mid-contract, unlike in football where it seems that players can often engineer a move if they care to do so.
While that big money move mentality isn’t available in the mortgage AR/network space, what we see increasingly is a ‘join us and you’ll get these amazing benefits’ approach from networks, focused on any number of areas which might be seen as deciding factors for advisory firms seeking a new network.
This can cover any number of areas. Technology tends to be cited as a big factor here – some networks suggesting their tech/system/process, etc, is the number one in the sector and trying to convince AR firms they are putting up with a second-best alternative.
It’s a tricky situation for AR firms I freely admit, but when looking at what’s on offer it’s important to sort the wheat from the chaff, the marketing spiel from the reality, when it comes to the technology being offered. The important point here is to carry out a proper comparison – compare what you have access to now, what is coming over the horizon shortly, with what may be on offer with others. It may not be the bells and whistles you are being promised.
We’ve also heard of networks promising AR firms a raft of consumer leads that ‘they wouldn’t get elsewhere’ which will vastly boost their underlying income because, after all, those leads will undoubtedly turn into completions. The reality has been for some AR firms that they sign up to a five-year contract with another network only to find that those consumer leads are few and far between and disappear just months into the agreement. At that point you might regret having signed up for that five-year period.
In other words, firms really need to take this seriously. To get under the bonnet of what’s being offered, to find out from existing AR firms what the reality is, and to make that proper comparison with what you currently might get, or indeed, what you might receive from another network.
We’ve had some firms who have left our network, based on essentially lies, and returned to us as soon as they possibly could. We’ve also had firms where the owner has decided to move networks, but individual advisers stayed with Stonebridge, either setting up an AR firm on their own or joining one of our existing AR practices. A recent firm which left saw four out of 10 advisers stay with us, which perhaps tells you what their thought of the owner’s decision.
We’re also not a business for those draconian contracts that get talked about, and we certainly believe we deliver on what we say we’re going to. We do understand the importance of tech, which is why we invest so heavily in our Revolution system, and we want our firms to be confident in the compliance support they get, and to make the most of the opportunities available. Others might purport to deliver this, but some are nowhere near the quality of their marketing – make sure you compare apples with apples and don’t be swayed by something that sounds too good to be true.
