Mortgage Room is a personalised mortgage brokerage and financial coaching service founded by Paul Fuller and wife Robyn, bringing years of banking industry experience. But running a high-volume mortgage advice agency dealing with tight deadlines, multiple stakeholders and compliance, Paul and the team needed a solution to keep up with the demanding pace.
"Unlike other areas of financial advice like investments or insurance, mortgages are incredibly time-driven. You've got settlement dates, finance dates, pressure from real estate agents, solicitors, clients, multiple offers – it's all go."
Marloo has become Paul's dedicated note keeper, transforming how Mortgage Room handles client meetings and administration.
"Marloo is like having another staff member sit in on the meeting, leaving me able to build rapport with clients, talk about their families and get to know them. Everything's recorded, and once the meeting's over Marloo filters it for you, and so you're getting to the information that you really need quickly, without having to listen to the entirety of a past recording."
The transformation has been dramatic for Paul's daily workflow. Before Marloo, the team used a time-consuming process where voice recordings were typed up by support staff.
"I start looking back now and going, how did we do it before? With Marloo I've gained half an hour to three quarters of an hour after a meeting. I can do one interview, do all my notes straight afterwards, and get into the next meeting, while Marloo does the rest of the work and follow-up."
Paul has customised Marloo with templates specific to Mortgage Room's different loan application scenarios: first home buyers, top-ups, construction loans, and fixed rate reviews. He then generates bank application letters and compliance documents directly from his client conversations.
"As long as I cover particular areas in the meeting with the client, Marloo captures that for me. I can produce my reason for taking them to a particular lender, my application notes, and potentially my structure recommendation, all from one meeting with the client."
The efficiency gains have now extended beyond Paul to his entire team. He says the support staff were initially cautious about the tool taking their job, but it's actually enhanced their roles. They are no longer tied up with typing and transcription.
“Their roles have changed from more admin to more customer and client-focused. They can be available for clients more, ring a client and talk them through something without the pressure of knowing they've got a backlog of typing and bits and pieces. That's a gamechanger when you're working to the quick turnaround timelines of a real estate purchase.”
Now Paul uses Marloo to batch process his client work, rather than stopping to do follow-up admin after each call.
"If I get a phone call, Marloo records it. If I get another one straight away, I'll take the call and bank them up a bit. Plus the clients know they're put first because I'm fully focused on them, not typing notes or doing anything else."
Paul says Marloo is now an essential part of the business.
"To me, Marloo is something I'm going to keep adapting with the business. It's not something you buy and say 'I've got it, it's working.' It's something you want to keep developing. The support's great. The Marloo team is always available and has been helping me to continuously adapt it to our changing needs."
More from our chat with Paul Fuller from Mortgage Room:
What prompted you to start using Marloo for your client meetings?
The biggest challenge was the amount of work coming through. We've got heaps, so we're definitely not quiet. Just balancing our clients' demands, the client base growing all the time, ongoing reviews, keeping up with compliance. Before Marloo, it felt like it was all about record keeping, now we can give so much more to our clients.
As a high-volume mortgage adviser, how has Marloo changed your daily workflow?
I'm saving about 2-3 hours a day, which I can use to see more clients. I can pretty much do one interview, do all my notes and everything else I need straight afterwards, and get into the next meeting if I need to. The turnaround after the appointment has been sped up dramatically. It diarises follow-up meetings, auto generates lending applications. Where we might have had three or four appointments a day, I might fit in five or six now, depending on what's on. Before I head into a meeting with a client I can also give me a quick summary of where we are at and what we need to cover in the meeting. If you were a one-man band adviser doing two or three appointments a day, there's no reason why you couldn't fit in four appointments a day with Marloo.
How do you use Marloo's templates for different types of mortgage work?
I have different templates: one for fixed rate reviews, first home buyers, top-ups, construction loans, because all that information's different for each client. The good thing about Marloo is you don't have to adapt the recording. You just hit record, use the template you want. If you want to use more than one template, you use the same recording to get different outcomes. It's not like you need multiple meetings with clients. One recording focused on the client, and we can summarise that meeting in any shape or form we want. It's less taxing for us and for our busy clients.
What impact has this had on your support team?
They can concentrate on things which are more client-relationship building than admin-focused and just being available when our clients need them. In theory, we would probably need someone doing typing full time without Marloo.While the support team were initially a bit concerned, they’ve now realised how much time it's saving them.
