AFG snares real estate-backed mortgage group

AFG has signed an agreement with Professionals Global Finance, the finance arm of Professionals Real Estate, a national group with almost 300 offices.

Professionals Global Finance said it decided to aggregate through AFG because the aggregator is the “clear leader in broker platform delivery” and has “cutting-edge IT and CRM systems”.

The new brokerage was launched in February as a national version of Professionals Finance WA, which has operated since 2002.

Managing director Rob Rooke said at the time that the business had 10 brokers, all based in Western Australia, but that it expected to be represented throughout Australia by the end of 2015 and to have about 150 loan writers by 2020.

Chief executive Andrew Gooding said the AFG partnership will help attract brokers to Professionals Global Finance as it expands across Australia.

“They’ll get great support from a trusted leader, plus the confidence to deliver outstanding finance experiences to our clients,” he said.

“[AFG] have strong relationships with consumer groups and are known for their integrity. These factors certainly helped make the partnership decision a whole lot easier.”

Professionals Global Finance will not rely solely on its real estate counterpart to generate referrals, according to Mr Gooding.

“The real estate staff are employed to sell property, and we don’t want to distract them from that task,” he said.

“We want to put in place mechanisms and processes that make it easy for them to [cater] to their own service offering while generating activity into the finance part of the business.”