The Ray White team has come together at their annual conference on the Gold Coast with a focus on curiosity, and finding ways for the company to continue to grow.
As part of the three-day conference, Curiosity Day saw 44 corporate team members deliver a five-minute pitch to their peers with ideas on how to make the business better.
Ideas ranged from creating a real-time dashboard for tracking marketing spends, to creating a Ray White Business Academy, staying closer to the alumni and even removing the yellow box on their residential logo.
Chairman Brian White said there was no such thing as bad curiosity, only having no curiosity.
“It doesn’t happen very often to reach a fourth-generation business, it’s very rare and we are stronger every year for 121 years,” Mr White said.
“The reason this is happening is we are determined to keep getting better.”
Ray White Managing Director Dan White said the event demonstrated the group’s commitment to its team with no ideas off limit.
“We keep looking ahead to challenge ourselves and never be complacent, and to keep chasing our potential,” Mr Dan White said.
He said the event also aims to empower leaders, create a family experience, network effects and competition creation.
“We have over 1000 leaders in our group and understanding where they are on their journey is critical, as their effectiveness defines our future,” Mr Dan White said.
“We need to hustle and make sure we are across our leadership opportunities and challenges.”
He said the goal is to create a better environment for their people.
“The best ideas will come from in this room,” he said.
“Are we creating and nurturing the most ambitious talent and providing a the place for them to flourish?”
“There are 25 leaders here who have their own team and P&L, enabling more decisive and focused leadership that enables us to move quickly.
“We know we still have so far to go.”
Mr Dan White also spoke about the three levels of the business that are in different stages.
The earlier-stage businesses include Neoval and then the more established Ailo and NurtureCloud which are growing rapidly.
He said across the main brands Ray White, LMG and RWC the mortgage business is seeing huge growth as well.
LMG Executive Chairman and Ray White Director, Sam White, said the mortgage aggregation business LMG had spent the past three years integrating three former NAB mortgage broking businesses – PLAN, Choice and FAST.
LMG now has 5150 brokers in its network, with $11 billion a month in settlements representing some 27 per cent of the Australian broking market.
Mr Sam White said their goal is to have 40 per cent residential market share of residential (up from 27 per cent), 50 per cent commercial (from 38 per cent) and 30 per cent of asset loans by 2028.
“Market share drives everything for us, and brokers like continuity,” he said.
“The system migration was harder than I ever expected and far worse than expected and we lost a lot of focus in this time.
“Complexity is expensive.
Mr Sam White said some great things came from the integration.
“We budgeted to lose 15 per cent of brokers but we only lost five per cent,” he said.
“We also had higher revenue than planned thanks to the strong market. And our service model has landed well.”
He said their market share is 27 per cent which has brought a lot more opportunity with lenders in Australia.
Mr Dan White said the group’s growth in 2023 looks to be the same as 2022, which is good with overall volume being incredibly resilient.
“Our market share is 13.6 per cent in Australia and New Zealand. Our auction market share is around 25 per cent and after 121 years our focus on auctions remains as relevant as always and we haven’t lost energy in talking about this,” he said.
Other highlights from the conference include the fact that property management platform Ailo now manages 40,000 properties as of October 2023, with $1 billion in rent through the books.
While NurtureCloud specialists Courtney Martin and Mark McLeod spoke about how there are now 717 active offices using NurtureCloud across Australia and New Zealand.
Ray White Head of Organisational Development Nat Hortz announced the establishment of the group’s Springboard Academy, a program for the wider corporate team to upskill and reach their full potential.
