A 30-day plan for
brokers and advisers.

Almost every channel you might use next month checks your licence details first. Google won't run finance ads in Australia until it has verified the advertiser against ASIC and ABN records. Meta asks for verified beneficiary and payer details on financial services ads (the Meta ads page covers how). And a client who's been referred to you will search your name before they call.

If your trading name or number differs between those places, verification stalls and the referral hesitates. So the first week is deliberately dull. Growth comes in week four, once the parts it depends on are in place.

Eighteen tasks, most of them under half an hour. Tick them off as you go. Your ticks stay in this browser, so you can come back through the month.

Look yourself up. Brokers and credit licensees are on ASIC's professional registers search, which shows name, number, address, start date and status, and is updated daily. Advisers are on the Financial Advisers Register, where the licensee records your qualifications, products and up to five professional memberships. If something's missing or out of date, ask your licensee to fix it.

Advisers should also confirm the status says registered. ASIC's registration requirement has applied since 16 February 2024, and ASIC has issued infringement notices to licensees whose advisers gave personal advice while unregistered.

Then your Google Business Profile. Google lists financial planners and insurance agents as individual practitioners, says a practitioner shouldn't have multiple profiles for different specialties, and wants the name to match the real-world name, with no taglines. 'Smith Home Loans', not 'Smith Home Loans | Best Mortgage Broker Penrith'.

Write a 'how I'm paid' page. The MFAA's consumer site explains it in a way anyone can follow: upfront commission is usually 0.65% to 0.70% of the drawn amount, trail generally 0.15% of the balance, and brokers can't pass a clawback on to the borrower. Put your own arrangements in the same plain words. If you charge a fee for some loans, say when.

Advisers have a different story to tell: what the first advice costs, what the ongoing fee covers, and that the client renews their consent each year and can let it lapse. Saying that up front is a selling point, not a risk.

Then make complaints easy to find. The MFAA recommends an easily accessible complaints policy that tells clients how to complain. Licensees have to have a complaints process anyway, and a visible complaints process is one of the things a nervous borrower looks for. Finally, start one page for a situation you handle often; the SEO page has the list.

Write down the last three months: enquiries, first meetings, applications lodged and loans settled (or, for advisers, statements of advice presented and accepted). That's your baseline.

Then record where every new enquiry came from, and carry it through to the end. GA4 has recommended events for each lead stage, from generate_lead for the enquiry to close_convert_lead when it becomes a client, so your website data can follow a lead to settlement rather than stopping at the form.

Last, make the review link. Google lets you create a link or QR code to request reviews from your Business Profile on a computer. Decide the moment you'll send it (after settlement, or once advice is in place) and send it to everyone, not just the easy ones.

Past clients and referrals are where most business comes from. For brokers, the MFAA's figures are on the choosing page. For advisers, Dimensional's global investor study found 53% of advice clients found their adviser through a friend or family referral, and 60% of clients under 40.

So make a list: past clients due a loan review, and the accountants, conveyancers, buyer's agents and real estate agents who could refer. Give each one a simple way to send someone to you. If any referral involves a payment, ask your licensee or aggregator how it must be disclosed before you agree to anything.

Finish by asking ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode the question a new client would ask about your area, and note who's named. The AI search page for brokers and advisers covers what to do with what you find.