After some career advice (cefa/ cemap)

Conrad

Jimmy you should understand that as an employee you are a centre of cost, lets say you cost £30000 pa, to include costs associated with HR, training etc etc.

An emloyer does'nt want someome to trun up and go through the motions, they want the same thing Alan Sugar wants: You must cover your costs and then add measurable and worthwhile value.

My time spent as a regional FS Manager told me that only about 1 in 20 people that begin employment are really suited to the role, so a lot less that 1 in 20 from the general populace.

Consider this:

Today a customer walks in and wants to compare 100% schmemes v 95%. Then they want to look at all the fixed rate vs variable rate variants.
THIS IS BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN DECIDED WHETHER TO BUY A HOME.

Next they want an agreement in principle (AIP). Given most lenders have moved away from income multiples - which lender will you AIP with? Perhaps the lender that offers the best deal, but experience tells you there is a good chance the AIP will not allow sufficient borrowing.

Lets say you finally pin down a deal clients like, you then get a lender to agree an AIP (having tried 2 time consuming others) but then the client finds a flat with a 70 year lease and the AIP becomes void due to this. What next?

On the back of all this activity most employers will want you also to sell those clients life cover which in trun is a complex time consuming excercise )unless you cut corners life many do - for example tell clients "not to worry about that childhood ailment").


What Im trying to demonstrate is the fact the job is so much harder to DO WELL that one might think.

You must be thick skinned and tough in order to weed out time vampires and focus on the good cases - not easy.

A lot of people drift away from the business after a few years.

On the other hand if you are good its a rewarding career.

Conrad

test test test test test.

Conrad

I was a regional manager in FS.

Each adviser is a 'cost centre'. The nature of the beast dictates that advisers muct cover thier costs (plus associated costs) and then add value in the form of cold hard revenues.

Only a minority go on to build a long term career as the demands are too high for most.

Giving people lots of advice (ie time and knowledge) is not what the role requires. It requires converting time and energy into cash and quickly. Many clients are time - vampires, it takes skill to spot them and to be frank get rid of them.
Relationships must be mutually beneficial. The client needs to understand your time is valuable.

No amount of training will ever produce a succesful adviser over a consistent period. You either have it or you dont.

Today I would say the same applies to Accountants. The sucesful ones I know are salesmen. They dedicate thier efforts into cash outcomes, NOT whiling away hours with time vampires.

mgulzar

I have come for some guidance from you financial experts!!!

I am 20, just passed CeMap and am current currently looking for employment-- the thing is, i say im looking but actually i do not know where to start and what are the best avenues explore?????????

I thought the difficult bit was passing the exam but i was very wrong!!

PLEASE HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:mad:

JoeK_3

MortgageMamma wrote: »

I am told the industry lacks new blood and thats because there is nowhere to get training and guidance to CAS status. Well that must be a bit of a myth as I've never seen so many trainee advisers and wanabee's on these boards and also other forums such as singingpig and cherry.


Was that a rant.....blimey not had one of them for a bit have I?

Nice one MortgageMamma.

My organisation will take trainee mortgage advisers on a national basis and train them through to competent adviser status http://www.become-mortgage-broker.org.uk but the truth of the matter is that people are not prepared to pay for this.

I have a lot of experience in training budding mortgage advisers, from teaching them to pass their CeMAP exam to training them to become successfull mortgage advisers but from my experience most people think that the job is too easy.

There are pain barriers that each trainee has to go through to become successful but only a small minority are prepared to go all the way.

Of the 1,000 people that we trained to CeMAP standards in 2006, about half of these already had a job to go to after successfully passing their CeMAP exams and the rest had to try and find an appropriate position in the industry.

As potential employer's of budding mortgage advisers, we are very selective and try to weed out the best candidates that we think have a chance of making it in the industry but having high standards at the front end does not guarantee success in all instances.

Only the tough survive.

JoeK

stewart82

WOW..this is an old thread but still useful. I'm looking to become a mortgage adviser myself. I've passed cemap 1 and 2 and i'm working towards completing 3. However with no industry experience any advise you guys could give as to how i could break into the industry would be greatly appreciated. I'm really not sure how to go about it.

dunstonh

However with no industry experience any advise you guys could give as to how i could break into the industry would be greatly appreciated.

Dont bother would probably be the most effective advice you could be given.

Mortgage advisers are going out of business left right and centre, costs are going up, income is going down and its with sub prime unlikely to return for a good long time then the potential to earn decent amounts is going to go away unless you can find other areas to deal in (e.g. full authorisation or introduce to IFAs or do it as a sales support role as well as mortgage adviser).

russman

I have been looking through these old messages - seems pretty depressing dunstonh! I have been in a totally different industry for years now and have been researching doing CeMap or CeFa for a while. NOt sure now! I am looking to relocated to Scotland and there seems to be plenty of job opportunities up there - maybe to good to be true? Also, I know cemap and cefa 1 are the same module, but ther rest is cemap technically easier? am a bit nervous about making the leap but want to. cost etc. :rolleyes:

Conrad

Well I'm still here, but business is fairly tough and if I didn't have a large existing client base and 20 years experience I think it would be impossible.

Another difficulty is those people that can get mortgages tend to be the sensible, quite well off types, who really have no need whatsoever of a mortgage broker, afterall there are only a limited number of lenders to chose from now and any monkey can establish the best deal for them.

This then really just leaes the complex difficlut cases who do need a broker, yet they are very difficult to place - you could train and study for years, but it would not help one jot, what counts is expereince.

koexelek

Consider the door to door selling of Betamax video cassette tapes instead.

Probably an easier life than mortgage broking at the moment