Well, it sure as hell feels like that.  Canadians are known for their climate infatuation, and we spend a great deal of time talking about the weather.  “Is it hot/cold enough for you” etc.  Somehow, some way…it always gets back to the weather.

But this year, even the most pragmatic among us, those people who are always reminding you that extreme weather conditions are a part of living in this country, are spending time trying to book a vacation and escape.  It seems that everyone I talk to is suffering from winter fatigue, and looking for a respite.

I was talking to my travel agent this week and she indicated that she’s swamped.  With every new blast of sub-zero temperatures, with predictions of yet another snow storm, her phone ends up ringing off to hook because people want out.  It will be interesting to see the stats provided by the tourist bureaus in California, Arizona and Florida with respect to Canadians vacationing in their states this year.  Throw in Mexico and the Caribbean, and I would be willing to wager there’s a significant spike this year of Canadians looking for relief in warmer climates. This winter has been been brutal!

It’s March break in Ontario, and like thousands of others, we got out of Dodge for the week and headed to Florida.  Even with all its quirks and peculiarities, Florida is a great place to visit.  Sunshine, warmth, and all the amenities of home. What’s not to like?  Okay, so their beer is nothing more than flavored water, but it’s an easy hardship to put up with. If it comes down to shoveling the driveway, scraping ice of the car windshield, putting on twelve layers of clothing to go out and get a coffee, I’ll gladly inhale another American Coors Light…it’s refreshing and yummy.

Hopefully we’re in the last stages of the winter from hell. That’s a bit of oxymoron. If you’ve had the chance to get away,  good.  If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?  One final note, for all those who live in Ontario, and complain about the heat and humidity in the summer, remember: February is just around the corner.

Until next time

Cheers

I believe, maybe naively, that the vast majority of people conduct their personal and work lives in an ethical manner. Adherence to ethical standards is a byproduct of life experiences, and our ethical standards shape who we are. But even ethical people sometime make decisions that one could construe as being unethical.  So can you be ethical on a selective basis? I don’t know the answer to that question but I came across a demonstration of ethics that made me ask myself if I would have done the same thing.

It happened last weekend, in of all places, Sin City, Las Vegas.  We went to Vegas to catch a few shows and maybe place a wager or two. I’m not a big gambler but if I’m going to Vegas, I’m not going there to visit a museum.  My game of choice is blackjack.  I find poker to be far too cerebral, and you can spend a lot of time at a poker table not doing much.  Craps is fun game, a little difficult to learn at first but if you hear cheering in a casino you usually have to look no further than the crap’s table.  But a close second for fun can be a blackjack table.  Get a good group of people that know how to play, and want to have some fun, throw in a dealer that doesn’t act like he’s playing with his personal money, it can be a very entertaining evening.

That’s exactly the scenario we found ourselves in last Saturday night.  Everyone at the table was having fun, and for the most part winning some money.  It the middle of all the fun one of the players at the table did not collect his winning after a hand. The players that won were laughing and fist bumping each other, but this one player didn’t move.  After the noise died down, he quietly said to the dealer, “you just paid me on a hand that I didn’t win.”  He pushed with the dealer, meaning the player and the dealer both had a 20, and yet the dealer paid him a winning bet of $100. He indicated he couldn’t take the money knowing cameras record every hand. He didn’t want the dealer to suffer the consequences. Well, to say that we were all a little surprised by the player’s insistence that he could not accept the $100 would be a gross understatement.  My thoughts were clouded by the fact that I had just lost five hands in a row. So my first thought was, “buddy, the casino does well enough and it doesn’t need your help.”

A funny thing happened after everyone’s initial reaction; we all started pulling for the guy to win.  Everyone started to ask him questions, I guess to test his authenticity.  We found out he was from Schomberg, Ontario. The Yanks at the table asked me if all us Canadians were that honest. Ah…yeah…sure!  Thanks to copious amounts of Jack Daniels, they serenaded us with a rendition of Oh Canada.   It wasn’t bad, they got most of the words right. I’ll never know for certain if our playing companion from Schomberg is the real deal. Would he return a $10 bill if found it in the back seat of a cab? Would he submit a receipt to CRA as a business expense, when in fact it was for personal use? Did he ever cheat on a test or exam?  I’ll never know for sure. One thing I do know is that he left the table up money. A lot of money.  Maybe there’s a connection.

Until next time

Cheers

Well, not really. I think I would rather watch eight hours of Degrassi reruns in a row than go fishing. My family, friends and acquaintances who enjoy fishing are rolling their eyes right now and thinking: “this coming from a guy who spends hour after hour trying to get a little white ball to fall into a ridiculously small hole. And all the while offering profanity-laced commentary.” To that I say, whatever! My aversion to fishing is that it’s too exhausting. You’ve got to cast the line, open a beer and take a seat. Whew! I’m fatigued just thinking about it.

All kidding aside, I’m off for a family vacation for the next couple of weeks and I actually might go deep sea fishing. We’ll see. Therefore, blog posts may come sporadically or not at all over the next couple of weeks. It will all depend on whether something funny as hell happens while we’re on vacation. Which usually happens in our family.

I thought a fitting way to end the week was to comment on a recent phenomenon happening here in Ontario. Not sure if it’s making its way to other parts of the country but I hope it does. It’s about random acts of kindness and by all accounts, it appears to have started in Ottawa. For some reason it all centers around coffee. Last week a man walks into a Tim Horton’s coffee shop in Toronto and asks the cashier how much would it cost to buy 500 medium cups of coffee. The response was $825. He pulls out his wallet, plunks down $825 and says “I’m buying the next 500 cups of coffee.” He then walks out of the coffee shop without giving his name and he didn’t bother to wait for the people standing in line behind him to say thank you.

More of these stories are coming to light and I think it’s so cool. Not many can afford to drop $825 worth of coffee on total strangers but one cup of coffee every now and then? I think so. But what is really cool is how these random acts of kindness generate stories. The recipients of the free coffee will tell at least one person about what happened to them that day. How many of us can say that we did something so selfless and kind that at least 1000 people are talking about it? So I tried it this morning, on a very small scale. Every street in downtown Toronto is being dug up, resulting in brutal traffic congestion. I work at the corner of Bay and Richmond and a portion of Richmond is closed due to road work. There are two police officers monitoring the intersection and as I walked by them today I said, “gent’s, I’m just on my way to Tim’s, can I get you a coffee?” The police officers were most gracious but declined. And I walked away feeling a little better because I made the gesture and I also know that I just created 4 new stories about simple kindness.

Until next time,

Cheers

Thank You!

I can’t even to begin to express my gratitude and thanks to all those who welcomed me in Australia.  From Phil Naylor, CEO MFAA, Steve Kane, National President MFAA, the MFAA Board, and all the staff, thank you for your gracious hospitality.  The MFAA put on a fantastic conference, and it gave me the opportunity to gain some insight into the Australian market, and to meet some wonderful people.

People like  Bridget Sakr, Chief Commercial Officer Genworth Fininacial.  Bridget invited me to attend a couple of round table discussions with some Genworth’s supporters.  It was an interesting exercise and validated that all Genworth employees share the same characteristics.  Customer relations, Best in Class.  People like John Flavell, General Manager Distribution, NAB (National Australian Bank) Broker.  John invited me to attend the NAB broker appreciation dinner. This dinner was for some of the biggest supporters of NAB.  It gave me a great opportunity to ask questions of the best of the best.  Great food, great wine, a captive study group for me, can’t ask for much more.  People like Annie Lim, who I sat beside at the conference gala dinner.  Annie is the Director of the Mortgage and Finance Association of Singapore!  A fledgling association but it was a great reminder to me look constantly beyond our own backyard to learn a thing or two.

To all my new mates in Australia,  I would like to extend an invitation to you to join us in Vancouver for Mortgage Forum 2012.  Our national conference is from November 25-27.  No worries, it doesn’t conflict with the Melbourne Cup. I can assure it would be a great experience, an opportunity to network, and maybe learn the odd thing from us Canucks.

Until next time

Cheers

The one significant difference between the Australian and Canadian broker market is broker market share.  CMHC just reported that in Canada, broker market share is 27%.  In Australia, it’s 42%.

Attending the MFAA Conference has accorded me the opportunity to garner insight into the Australian broker market.  The stakeholders in Australia are as passionate and committed to their industry as we are in Canada.   I am struck by the market similarities we share, as it relates to the overall economy, and the broker market specifically.   One similarity we share is negative press. The issues are different but the press in Australia is as committed to fear mongering as it is in Canada.  There’s no talk of too much consumer debt here, yet their average mortgage balances are no different than in Canada. Here the primary focus is all that could go wrong beyond Australia’s boarder, which in turn will lead to the destruction of the Australian economy.  

Europe’s an issue; however, the press in Australia is casting its worrisome gaze in China’s direction, which on the surface is laughable.  China is Australia’s largest trading partner.  The Aussies distanced themselves from the U.S. market years ago.  They decided to hook their wagon to an emerging market like China, and fortuitously decided to distance themselves from the world’s largest sub-merging economy, the US.  Ah, but gory headlines are needed, so the focus is on China’s slowing economy.  It appears that 7 1/2% growth is no reason to celebrate or feel comfortable.  The talk is will China have a soft or hard landing, which ultimately will impact the Australian economy.  Can you imagine,  if the US was forecasting 7 1/2% growth, and what that would mean for the Canadian economy?  Yet somehow 7 1/2 % growth in China could have a negative impact in Australia.  Just wondering what part of 71/2 % growth produces a hard landing?    I guess the old saying about the press is no different in Australia – “if it bleeds…it leads”.  

The one significant difference between the Australian and Canadian broker market is broker market share.  CMHC just reported that in Canada, broker market share is 27%.  In Australia, it’s 42%.  I’ve asked every Aussie I’ve spoken to at the conference the following: “how did brokers grow their market share to 42%”?  As I suspected, there was no one definitive answer, but there were some underlying themes.

It appears that the psyche of the average Aussie plays a part in those market share numbers.  Aussies have a deep distrust of the banks and animosity towards their profits. Many Aussies believe the higher cost of borrowing has contributed to those bank profits.  Yet, banks in Australia have a 90% market share of all broker business.  So that distrust and anger has not resulted in less business for the banks. In large part that is due to the lack of competition, but it appears also that consumers look to brokers to provide them with the best of the least tasteful option.  Interesting, to say the least.

Another critical factor which contributes to the success of the broker channel is the investment that the large firms make towords advertising.  I had the pleasure to speak to Michael Russell, CEO of Mortgage Choice in Australia, about this very subject.  Without getting into specifics, Mortgage Choice invests multiple millions of dollars in advertising.  Their individual franchises advertise on their own, which collectively exceeds the dollar amount committed to advertising by Mo rtgage Choice corporately.  Throw in Aussie Hone Loans, and number of other firms which advertise, and it’s easy to see why an Aussie consumers would chose a mortgage broker.  Some of the larger broker firms in Australia spend more on advertising than the banks do, as it relates to mortgages.  The messaging is choice, service, quality of broker, trust and yes, pricing.  Since the GFC (Global Financial Crisis), Aussies are far more focused on price.  However, price alone is not enough.  The Aussie borrower is looking for utility and competency.  

There’s plenty to learn from the Australian broker experience.   Volumes speak, like $90 billion a year in origination.  I’m looking at a rate sheet from Westpac, one of the major banks in Australia, and their 5 year fixed rate is 6.99%, and the good news is their ARM pricing has been reduced to 7.09%.  You may be surprised to learn that 60% of all mortgages in Australia is ARM.  The most recent MFAA Home Finance Index, which measures consumer sentiment, indicates that the percentage of consumers who would chose a broker first, as compared to those who would chose a bank first, is almost identical.  We share many similarities with the Aussie broker market, yet some of the differences are profound.

Until next time

Cheers