While much of the industry focus is on AI, open banking, and product innovation – with 2026 fintech outlooks predicting AI will be deeply embedded in core financial workflows – some of the brokers growing market share fastest are concentrating on something less glamorous: cleaning up their back office.
Andrew Beckett (pictured left), head of broker and third-party distribution at workflow and CRM platform Lend, says many firms are still leaving their biggest performance lever untouched.
“The biggest lever most brokers haven’t pulled is operational efficiency,” Beckett says. He warns that “they’re spending hours a week on tasks that should take minutes — chasing documents, re-keying data, toggling between systems.”
Research cited by Beckett suggests the typical broker can spend close to two days a week on administration and compliance rather than revenue-generating, client-facing work. For smaller practices in particular, that time burden can make real scale feel out of reach.
Gold Coast-based broker Dayle Filliponi (pictured right), director of Lend It Finance Group, has seen the impact of inefficiency first-hand as he grew his asset finance business from a one-person operation into a team with access to more than 60 lenders.
“I lived that,” Dayle says of the long days spent juggling paperwork and follow-ups just to keep existing deals moving.
The turning point, he explains, came when the business moved away from piecing together separate tools for CRM, lender comparison, compliance tracking, and client communication. By consolidating workflows into a single platform, the team increased throughput without a comparable rise in headcount or overheads, while also speeding up turnaround times.
According to Filliponi, clients notice when the process runs smoothly from first contact through to settlement, and that has started to flow through into stronger referral business.
Beckett describes Lend’s approach as deliberately “aggregator-agnostic”, designed to sit across different groups and remove friction from broker workflows. Rather than trying to replace advisers, the focus is on automating compliance steps, centralising deal tracking, and making lender comparisons near-instant so brokers can take on more clients with the same team.
For brokers feeling stretched, Beckett recommends starting with a simple, practical review of how time is actually being spent.
“Map one typical week,” he says. From there, identifying manual processes that can be automated or streamlined becomes easier, turning previously hidden admin costs into a clear growth opportunity.
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