Echo Finance
Echo Finance is the first business I founded, right off the back of a five-year stint as a mortgage, protection and equity release adviser. I really felt at home in the mortgage industry, it had been good to me, and I saw an opportunity to put roots down in it.
This story began in 2012 when I joined forces with my friend and fellow mortgage adviser, John Tarazi, to launch a brokerage around our shared values. That brokerage was Echo Finance, and today, it’s one of the largest directly authorised firms in the business.
Where it all began
John and I both racked up plenty of experience in the industry before we founded Echo. I specialised in the residential market while John gravitated towards buy-to-let.
We both shared a vision for a brokerage that improves the industry by building new systems and tech, but also offers clients a five-star experience. Our ethos has always been that our customers should be customers for life, and will still strive towards that with every case.
Echo began as a humble operation, working out of a small office in Mirfield, and we spent years perfecting our business model before progressing with expansion plans. We built a robust compliant model and our own CRM system, Echo CRM, which we still use today.
We’ve always been passionate about creating our own infrastructure, and looking back, I can confidently say that what we have built over the years has improved the industry.
How Echo Finance has grown
When Echo Finance first started out, we largely offered face-to-face mortgage advice from our West Yorkshire base, but we had ambitious growth plans for the future.
What forced our hand, though, was the coronavirus pandemic. Lockdown and its aftermath posed an existential threat to mortgage firms that weren’t operating on a remote model, so we had to transition to this quickly, but it allowed us to extend our reach across the UK.
Since then we have expanded our business far beyond mortgages, making serious inroads in areas such as equity release, bridging commercial and protection insurance, and established ourselves in the lead-generation sector through our sister company, LeadCrowd.
By sticking to our guns, launching a successful lead-gen operation to complement our work at Echo and continuing to build our own infrastructure, our brokerage has grown into one of the largest directly authorised firms in the country, and we’re not done yet.
Work with me at Echo
As Echo is a rapidly growing whole-of-market mortgage brokerage, I’m always keen to hear from advisers who are looking for a new home at a directly authorised firm.
Get in touch if you’re one of the following and seeking a place to work on your own terms:
- Mortgage brokers
- Commercial mortgage advisers
- Bridging finance advisers
- Equity release advisers
- Protection insurance advisers
- Mortgage administrators
- Estate planners
Echo Finance is also open to doing business with…
- Introducers: Including agents, solicitors, accountants and property developers
- Lead providers: Who wish to sell enquires through our lead gen business
- Recruiters: With skilled job hopefuls to potential place
- Marketing professionals: With knowledge of SEO, content writing, CRO, design, PR and any other area of marketing
- Anyone else: If you don’t fall into any of these categories but have a business proposition for Echo, I’d love to hear from you.
Get in touch below to find out more about my work at Echo Finance and how we could potentially work together in the future.