Mortgage Link founder and former general manager Roger Poulter sold his 34% stake in the business early this year which resulted in the company gaining more than 50 shareholders, 35 of them licencees. Rod Templeton, formerly general manager at Perpetual Trust, took over as chief executive in February.
"We’ve become big enough and independent enough, particularly now that our shareholding has changed from only a couple of people owning all the shares," says Mortgage Link chairman Ross Butler.
"We thought it was appropriate that we should have direct links with the lenders and have one less link in the chain from lenders to brokers."
Carey Brunel at Mortgage People (formerly Property Pack), which is another member of The Mortgage Alliance and which has 16 or 17 brokers, says the organisation will be wound down over the next few months as the member companies negotiate their own contracts with lenders.
Mortgage People and Mortgage Link were the origional members of The Mortgage Alliance and were later joined by several smaller firms, one of which, Financial Group New Zealand, departed late last year.
As well as aggregating commissions, it had been intended that The Mortgage Alliance would pool resources to develop IT systems.
Brunel says the organisation had been looking at that but that there may have been an element of impatience at the progress. "Their expectations were slightly higher than what the reality is. We were developing a computer model, but we hadn’t got to the stage where we could deliver that to all the individual brokers.
Brunel says he doesn’t expect the organisation’s demise will materially affect his company.
Butler says: "I wouldn’t say it was impatience, but it hasn’t happened in terms of delivery of IT."
Mortgage Link is now looking at developing its own IT systems.
