Obsessed with providing ‘white glove service at scale’, this award-winning young broker has diversified his business to provide legal services to enhance his clients’ experience.
Logan Stanford from Stanford Financial won the Newcomer and Diversified Business Awards at the 2022 MFAA National Excellence Awards.
His path to broking began after being injured in the Army left him looking for another way to give back. Logan went into in a role in asset finance at a car dealership but felt constrained in what he could offer his clients, and the scale at which he could make a difference.
“At the dealership I was frustrated only having four lenders to compare for my clients and was referring business to brokers because of that restriction. I absolutely loved helping my clients, and I knew that if I structured debt correctly, I could really help people achieve their goals.” explained Logan.
It was a chance encounter with a customer, who happened to be a broker, that led Logan to take a leap and step into broking himself.
With a vision for a vertically integrated professional services group who can radically improve all aspects of their clients’ lives, Logan says he is obsessed with great client experience and spends his time trying to constantly improve how the client feels during the journey. He mentions his approach to this has been to think of his ideal experience, then strive to deliver 10 times better.
His business offers residential mortgage broking, commercial and equipment finance broking, automotive finance, insurance and has recently added legal services to their offering.
When asked why he decided to diversify into offering legal services he tells the story of a time when he was on three phones at once talking to a lender, a conveyancer and the lender’s solicitor at the same time to get an application to settle.
“The other parties didn’t have a sense of urgency. It was a mess, and a really bad experience for the client,” he said.
Being obsessed with the client experience, Logan decided they could do better and set about hiring great solicitors and paralegals to offer their clients a premium ‘white glove’ service at scale. Logan laughs as he described the ‘back of the envelope’ numbers they did on the business model before launch, but believed if he added enough value to his clients, the rest would follow.
“From a business perspective, our ethos is simply ‘give and you shall receive’. On the operations front, we are still constantly improving by doing an After-Action Report on every matter and choosing areas to fix, improve and sustain,” said Logan.
Logan also saw that he could help other brokers and offers legal services to other brokers' clients while maintaining a strict ‘no poaching policy’.
“We now have referral agreements with multiple broker groups for our legal services. We take good care of their clients and keep them informed the whole time,” said Logan.
“This reduces the burden on them in preparing for settlement, chasing discharges, booking settlement, and so on.”
Diversification in markets is also important to Logan, it is what was inspired in him by Barack Obama’s book A Promised Land which he read about 12 months ago.
“I read the part where Obama saw a broker to do some renovations to his home when he was a senator. Cut to later in the story, the global financial crisis was in full swing, and he drove past that broker’s office and saw a ‘For lease’ sign in the window.
“That day, I knew we needed to diversify into an offering that could stand alone, but also be supplementary to our existing clients. In the climate of our clients expressing frustration, that is where the long road to starting our law firm began,” explained Logan.
Logan now leads both companies which are made up of a diverse team of 14 finance and legal experts completely dedicated to their clients needs, while “having a great time doing it”.
When it comes to advice for other brokers entering the industry Logan says, “Learn, learn, learn everything you can – then back yourself and put it into practice. One is not any good without the other.”
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