Dalibor Ivkovic: From Refugee to a Powerhouse in the FinTech Space in Australia

Salestrekker is the name of a CRM platform that all smaller aggregators who don't have their own proprietary software use. A few brokers and large brokerages who are with larger aggregators also use Salestrekker in addition to their aggregator software. Why is this the case? Ease of use and intuitive UX could be key. But who is behind Salestrekker? and what is the story behind why it came to exist? In this episode, Dien talks to Dalibor Ivkovic about his journey from refugee to a Powerhouse in the 3rd Party Broker space in Australia. Dalibor Ivkovic came to Australia as a refugee during the 1990s as a result of the unrest due to the War in the former Yugoslavia. He, his mother and sister settling in Tasmania because he had an Uncle who lived there. Having to overcome his struggle with a new language, he graduated university as an engineer and ended up in the Brewing Industry for 12 years! His career with Carlton Breweries (in VIC) lead him to Brisbane. And it is here that he started an unsuccessful Web Development Business which luckily lead to him accidently falling into the finance broker industry. By pure chance, a mortgage broker friend, John Paynter needed a new website built. This lead to John (and his assistant) receiving more leads than they were able handle. So Dalibor looked at the mortgage broker process to see how he could save time for John (and other brokers) by looking at where the inefficiencies were. Not long after that Xsource (a Processing Business for Brokers) was born. Being the Engineer that he was, Dalibor developed systems and processes before he started to build a customer base. All business was via word of mouth and today Xsource employs 80 staff to assist brokers from all over Australia. A hurdle he found early on was to track a status of a deal in-flight, both for the processor and the broker. There was nothing on the market at the time - they went through a few off the shelf platforms before building their own Platform - Salestrekker. Initially Dalibor was going to leave it to his mom to run whilst he concentrated on the main business - loan processing. Then one day, whilst attending a Connective PD Day, a speaker on the topic of Future of open banking sparked the idea that Salestrekker had the ability (and now the opportunity) to become something big. Luck was again on his side because a commonly used CRM at the time, Symmetry, as sold and then on-sold to larger businesses that didnt take an interest in the small sample size of mortgage brokers in Australia. As a result not much effort as put in place to keep it relevant to the Aggregators who used it as their CRM. Enter Salestrekker and the rest is history. One of the things that made Salestrekker so successful was because Dalibor was always looking for what that next bottleneck for a brokers will be in the future. Programmes that saw early adoption and integration by Salestrekker were things that would massively cut down on time on a file. Applications such as " e-sig, video conferencing and recording, bankstatements.com.au etc integrated for brokers to use. The Pandemic brought most of this applications to the forefront, especially video conferencing. Another matter in 2021 that will be critical will be Best Interest Duty (BID). As of 1 January 2021, BID is in play where Broker are to Act in the best interest of their client. Otherwise they would find themselves on the wrong end of the court system. Dalibor strongly believes that Tech will play an important role in helping brokers be able to successfully navigate BID. Those who dont pick it (tech) up will struggle to operate without their CRM or other tech solutions to prove their conversations with their clients. Are your processes and systems ready? Is there more education that is needed? Are you BID Ready?