career change - mortgage broker?

reachedwin

Hi I am 41 and was looking to change my career to a mortgage broker. Is it too late to start? I am looking to do a Cemap course first and then do a full time job and see how it goes and then maybe go self employed. But its a late career move so just wanted to be sure. 

dunstonh

Hi I am 41 and was looking to change my career to a mortgage broker. Is it too late to start? 

Age is not an issue.

 I am looking to do a Cemap course first and then do a full time job and see how it goes and then maybe go self employed.

Who will employ you?  What do you have that you can offer to a new employer?

How are you going to get clients?

You need to take those questions seriously.  Over half of new advisers leave within 2 years having failed at it.   The most common reason is lack of customers/clients.     You cannot cold call.  So, where are they going to come from?

Anamox

It looks like the baby steps are done at estate agency's in-house mortgage advisor teams, and from the ones I've met they were all ex-estate agents that had been promoted internally. Can you do anything like that? As Dunston says, I assume it's like any results driven career... if you've no proven results it may not matter if you're qualified/trained, they just won't care about you.

ACG

Your age is not an issue.
The problem with this industry is getting your first steps. CeMap is the easy bit, you then need CAS and getting that is hard. 

Cemap is not really worth the paper is printed on when it comes to the job however, so you need to be prepared that when you pass the exams and you start the job, you are literally starting from scratch. 

I cant decide if now is a good time to become a broker or not, on the one hand the world is potentially going to pot and you could find there is a recession for the next few years, where are you going to get customers from. On the flip side, there are times now where I feel like a brand new broker due to how much is changing on a daily basis. 

I think you would be mad to change career now, but no harm working towards it. If the world doesnt go to pot then you might be qualified by the time normality returns.