Up Loans co-founder and mortgage broker Kirsty Dunphey reveals her biggest inspirations. From her segue into broking from property management to co-founding a fi rm, she says it’s all about helping others, having a good mentor, and representation
Q: Who or what inspired you to become a broker?
A: My biggest inspiration has been wanting to help people. I grew up in a household with pretty unstable financial circumstances, and I wanted to help others ensure that didn’t happen to them. Naively, I thought my real estate background would actually give me a bigger head start than it ended up doing. What a learning curve that turned out to be.
Q: What’s one of your recent career highlights?
A: Making the MPA Top 100 list for the first time in 2019 was a defi nite highlight for me. I also felt very proud to finally see a Tassie broker represented on the list. It’s important for new brokers in the Tassie market to see a Tassie name on the list, and especially important for other female brokers to see women being represented. I’d love to see that number increase, not drop, in 2020.
Q: What do you wish you’d known when you started out as a broker?
A: I wish I’d worked for a year or two at the feet of someone amazing doing great volumes in a really responsible and efficient way. While I consider myself very fortunate to have been mentored formally and informally by some wonderful brokers, it was stretched over a number of years rather than at the very beginning.
Q: What’s the greatest challenge for brokers at this time?
A: I’ve found the time it takes to process an application from beginning to end has probably tripled in the last couple of years. A broker writing larger loan numbers like myself cannot do that alone. My greatest challenge has been efficiency, and I’ve manoeuvred that by surrounding myself with a great team.
Q: What’s one thing, personal or professional, that you hope to achieve this year?
In 2020, I’m looking forward to writing loans for some 50 clients in a single month – that’ll be a new record for me. I also really want to get back to Africa – I was blown away by Kenya and Rwanda last year, and I’m keen to return to this amazing continent.