When Westpac slashed upfront broker commissions overnight in the early 2000s — from 0.7% to 0.5%, with no warning and no negotiation — Tony Bice (pictured) got a lesson he never forgot. Other lenders followed. There was no recourse and no way to fight back. The only answer was to make sure it could never hurt him like that again.
That moment set the course for the next two decades. Bice spent his first twenty years at CBA before entering the broking industry at 40 — initially in senior management at aggregator Lawfund, and later founding his own practice, First Choice Mortgage. Today he argues that the single most important thing any broker can do is diversify. Not eventually. Now.
Commission cuts are an occupational hazard. What made the Westpac episode different was the realisation that lenders, not brokers, controlled the dial — and that accepting that meant accepting the vulnerability indefinitely.
"What's to stop lenders from reducing upfront commissions even further or reducing trailing percentages — in other words I knew from that day on I had to 'control my own destiny' because no-one was going to help do it for me," Bice said.
His response was to branch into financial planning, with a specialisation in risk insurance — a natural fit at the point of a home loan conversation, and a revenue stream that operates independently of property market conditions.
The market brokers operate in today is fundamentally different from the one that existed when the third-party distribution channel was writing just 2% of Australian home loans. Clients are better informed, more self-directed, and harder to retain. Google and AI tools mean consumers can research products before they ever pick up the phone.
"The days of simply being a mortgage broker skilled in just writing home loans might have worked well 'back in the day', but those days are well and truly gone, consumers these days are so much savvier — you are not just competing against other mortgage brokers (who do the same thing), but you're also competing with consumers themselves," Bice said.
For him, the answer to that competitive pressure isn't better marketing or cheaper rates — it's delivering something unexpected. Clients who come in for a home loan and walk out with a risk insurance review have a reason to stay loyal that no competitor can easily replicate.
Australia's property investment landscape is shifting. Proposed changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing treatment have created hesitancy in the investor market — a problem for brokers whose books are heavily weighted toward residential investment lending. Bice's view is direct: the brokers who survive disruption are the ones who pivot rather than wait.
"We've got two choices, we can 'bury our heads in the sand' and say it's all too hard or we can pivot into what works such as focusing on commercial lending, SMSF's or new build investment lending — people are always looking for money, that'll never change (yes, things are a bit weird and people are hesitant but this will level off once the dust settles)," he said.
It's the same principle Bice applied after the commission cuts, and the same one that's kept his business generating revenue through the current slowdown, with risk insurance picking up where residential lending has softened.
The pivot capability Bice describes isn't just about surviving slow markets — it has a direct bearing on what a broking business is ultimately worth. A practice with multiple accredited revenue streams is a more valuable asset at the point of sale, and for brokers building toward an exit, the work done now to diversify directly shapes the outcome at retirement.
"Diversifying has enabled me to grow my business way beyond my wildest dreams and it’s put me in the box seat for the next exciting chapter in life which is being comfortably self-funded in retirement," Bice said.
After 25 years in an industry he initially knew nothing about, that's the case Bice makes to anyone entering the profession: what you build into your business now will determine what you get out of it later.
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