Australian Broker’s Spotlight Series is back, shining a light on the people making their mark across Australia’s mortgage and finance industry.
This time, we're heading west to Bunbury, in Western Australia, where Amol Agrawal, founder and finance broker at Juice Finance, has built a business around putting customers first.
His approach has clearly struck a chord. In July, Agrawal took home the "Customer Service Award – Individual" at the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia’s (MFAA) 2026 National Excellence Awards. The honour is recognition of the impact he’s making with both his clients and his business.
Australian Broker caught up with Agrawal to find out what's behind the award, unpack the journey that brought him into broking, what inspired him to strike out on his own and build Juice Finance, and the approach to customer service that has helped set him apart.
"Perhaps my success has really been a combination of my clients growing, me growing with them, and making sure that every new client story teaches me something that makes me better for the next one," the founder told Australian Broker.
From his beginnings in the industry, to building an award-winning business in regional Australia, Agrawal shares the lessons, challenges and secrets behind his success.
The following interview has been edited for grammar and clarity.
AA: I’ve called Bunbury, Western Australia home for nearly two decades. But my journey into finance goes back much further. My first job, after completing my postgraduate qualifications in marketing and finance, was in finance. I then moved to Bunbury and spent more than a decade working with a local small business in B2B sales and account management. But I could never get finance out of my DNA. Finance and banking had already spanned two generations of my family before me, so it was inevitable that I would find my way back into the industry one day.
The actual move into broking happened almost by chance. A broker mate of mine was keen to have me come on board as a broker. At the time, I had a full-time pay as you go (PAYG) job and, in my mind, I just assumed I needed that fortnightly wage hitting the bank account. I never really stopped to think that perhaps I didn't. But the idea of broking stayed with me. I decided to pursue the studies and eventually approached an aggregator about getting started. I still remember making what was probably going to be my last phone call about it. If I hadn't heard back from them, that probably would have been it. And I genuinely might not be doing what I'm doing today.
But they did come back to me, and in 2018 I became a broker. At that stage, I wasn't thinking about building a broking business or making it my full-time career. I wanted to start almost as a hobby and out of genuine interest in finance more than anything else. There weren't too many options available to do it that way at the time. But I found a way to make it work alongside my full-time job.
Fast forward to April 2021, and I got into broking full-time with one simple objective: to be a broker for everyday Australians, helping them achieve extraordinary goals. From the beginning, my business model was never revenue-driven. It was built around being accessible to clients, taking the time to properly research their options, focusing on quality rather than quantity, and finding the best possible outcome for each individual client.
AA: I've had my own business since day one as a broker, initially under a franchise brand, before launching Juice Finance in July 2023. Throughout my working life, I found that people tended to connect with me rather than the name of the business I represented, which essentially makes me the brand. So, I thought having my own brand was a natural next step, giving me the freedom to build the business around my own values, service standards and the way I wanted to look after my clients. Through client referrals, the business has also grown well beyond Bunbury. Today, I have clients across the whole of WA, as well as a few in the Northern Territory, Tasmania, Queensland and Victoria, while keeping Bunbury as home.
AA: I don't think there is one secret. But if I had to put it down to a few things, it would be diligence, being client-focused, education, speed, research and quality. Every opportunity that came my way also brought a different set of challenges. Every time I came across something I hadn't dealt with before, I researched it, learnt from it and became a little wiser for the next client. Over time, that knowledge and experience just kept building.
At the same time, my clients grew in their own lives. First-time homebuyers I helped years ago have since built equity and come back to refinance, upgrade or become investors. Property price growth, particularly in WA, has obviously helped create equity and opened opportunities for many of those clients who simply weren't there when I first met them. I take the time to understand the client and educate them through the process, but I also like to get things moving quickly. Speed for me doesn't mean cutting corners. It comes from doing the work upfront and knowing exactly what needs to be done.
I also put a lot of time into the preparation of an application: researching policy, looking for potential issues and making sure the application tells the complete story. Apparently, based on the feedback I get from lender BDMs, assessors and other industry stakeholders, the quality of my submissions is right up there. I believe quality submissions lead to quality outcomes. They also lead to faster outcomes because the lender has the information and supporting documents they need from the beginning.
I think that combination of quality work, fast turnaround, accessibility and genuinely looking after the client has also meant referrals have happened organically. I haven't had to build the business around constantly chasing the next client. A client has a good experience, they come back as their own circumstances change and they tell their family, friends or colleagues. So perhaps my success has really been a combination of my clients growing, me growing with them, and making sure that every new client story teaches me something that makes me better for the next one.
A lot of credit also goes to my lender BDMs who are always there to assist whenever I have a tricky scenario, or even when I’m simply chasing an answer to a policy question. Every interaction adds to my knowledge base and helps me become a better broker for my clients.
