Prakash Rai (pictured), a specialised mortgage broker in Australia, spent more than three years in a Home Loan Experts broker support team in Nepal before he wrote his first loan. He says those years behind the scenes gave him a clear view of what happens to a loan after it is submitted.
Rai, a 2025 5-Star Broker, joined Home Loan Experts in December 2014 as a junior support staffer, learning loan processing, lender requirements, and documentation while helping brokers with the administrative side of their applications. He later rose to manage the company's support teams in Nepal.
His break came when the company piloted a program to move one member of its Nepal team to Australia to work directly with clients. Rai was selected and began broking in February 2018.
"I didn't become a broker overnight," he said.
Rai credits his time on the processing side with showing him how much rides on getting an application right from the start.
One of his toughest deals came from a family close to giving up. Two brothers, one in Switzerland and one in New York, needed to refinance a high-interest private debt facility on a jointly owned Melbourne property. Several banks had declined them. Rai worked across time zones and analysed overseas self-employed income and foreign tax returns before securing an approval. He said the result came down to persistence, creativity, and strong lender relationships.
Rai is not overly concerned about market cycles. He sees channel conflict between brokers and banks as one of the industry's key issues. He argued that lenders should not offer incentives or special deals that are opaque or not equally available through other channels. He wants a framework that defines client ownership, referral pathways, remuneration, and accountability.
Rai said the broker and bank "should not be competing against one another but should be complementing each other."
Rai’s first piece of advice to newcomers: "don't worry too much about the market cycle."
He urges them instead to build strong systems for client management, compliance, and follow-up, and to adapt quickly as technology and customer expectations shift.
The job has already changed a great deal since he started in 2014. Manual document collection and lender follow-ups have given way to e-signatures, CRM systems, PEXA settlements, and open banking. Rai said these tools free brokers to spend more time on advice.
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