Client Retention Strategies for Brokers

Brokers are more popular than ever

Even if you’re new to brokerage you’ll have experienced many market changes in your career. The latest of which has seen more and more people engaging with broker services, when buying a property or looking to move up the housing ladder.

Stats published be the Mortgage Lenders Association estimate that that 90% of all mortgage business will be conducted through brokers in 2024, increasing from only 47% in 2012. Now more than ever, brokers have the opportunity to support in the journey to ownership.

Do you know what you need to do to keep clients returning?

An increased demand means you’re likely to face more competition. We’ve seen a 1.9% increase in the number of UK mortgage broker businesses between 2022 and 2023. With more brokers entering the market its important to define your client retention strategy. Before building advocacy you need to work out how loyal your current clients are.

How loyal are your clients?

To measure loyalty among your client base you can calculate your Net Promoter Score as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for any of your marketing activity.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Have you ever been asked “how did we do?”. Businesses of all kinds will use this as an opportunity to receive feedback, usually asking customers how likely they would be to recommend their services to a friend, colleague or family member using a scale of 1-10. You can use this too. A score of ten means your clients would be incredibly likely to recommend you, and a score of 1 would mean they wouldn’t recommend you at all.

Based on the answers you can categorise people as detractors (0-6), passives (7-8), and promoters (9-10), you can use to gauge the overall loyalty of your client base. You can use follow up questions like “what are your reasons for this score?” or “what can we do to make your experience better?” Giving your survey respondents an opportunity to give more qualitative feedback can surface insights about your services that you might not have otherwise considered.

Don’t worry if you have a high proportion of clients initially appearing in the detractor category, there are plenty of ways to build loyalty.

Lock in loyalty

Once you understand what value you can receive by helping your clients achieve their goals over their lifetime and their overall opinion of your services, you can use a number of strategies to keep them coming back. Some proven tips include the following:

Referral strategies

Show how you can incentivise clients by highlighting tailored services or offering rewards for leaving valuable feedback and reviews or recommending new clients.

Share market insights

Use social media to build your platform and position yourself as an expert. Interpreting news and market conditions in a way that is helpful to existing followers will foster affinity in your audience. If you want additional insights on how to grow your profile, check out our broker's guide to social media.

Offer tailored support

Tailored support for your clients is key in understanding individual client circumstances. You can speak directly to specific audience groups through email and offer support to the right people at the right time. For more details on how to approach this, read our guide to email marketing.

Put yourself in their shoes

This might seem an obvious thing to mention, but it’s important to keep that view on your clients in addressing their needs. If you’re able to think about exactly what you would want from your own broker, especially in achieving your own financial goals. and tweak your offering accordingly, you will build loyalty amongst your existing clients.

The market for brokers will continue to become more competitive as people rely on your expertise to get a mortgage that’s right for them. In order to secure and grow your own client base, you should try using some of the strategies we’ve described to keep them engaged in your financial advice services for years to come.