Nadine: Hello, I'm Nadine from Affordable Staff and I'm here with Angela from our office
in the Philippines.
She is a client of POD Financial and she's actually here in Australia because Angela
was up for an MFAA Loan Administration Award.
Angela, hi.
What type of work were you doing before you were working with us?
Angela: Before I worked as a VA, I was working in the customer service department.
So in a variety of call centers.
I've worked in different fields like in travel, pharmacy help desk, internet, and in banking
as well.
Nadine: Wow so you have a nice broad range of skills.
Angela: Yeah.
Nadine: Excellent.
Okay.
So why did you apply to work with us?
Angela: I decided to apply as a VA because it just suits my skill set.
Nadine: Yeah.
Angela: It's something that requires analysis, organization, attention to detail, which I
have.
Nadine: Yes.
You excel in that.
Okay, awesome.
So in terms of working with Laura and the team at POD, how do you find that?
Angela: I love it.
I think we have a really great team at POD.
There are four of us right now.
Laura, Grace, Jolyn, and me.
And I think that we just complement each other.
And we're all girls and we're all, we just deal well together, Grace and Jolyn.
Jolyn is easy to train, which I'm doing right now with her.
And Grace is very easy to deal with as a broker.
And Laura of course is really great in driving the business.
Nadine: Excellent.
So you guys have a nice balanced team between the four of you.
Angela: Yes.
Nadine: Awesome.
So now that you're in Australia for a visit, how has that visit been, and what has surprised
you the most about the trip?
Angela: It's been a great visit.
I've gotten a chance to meet lenders, the clients, I got to attend a BNI meeting, and
I've gotten to meet my family, my sister and my aunts here.
And nothing has really surprised me, everything's just been interesting.
Nadine: Yeah.
Okay, awesome.
I'll go to my next question, so you were nominated for the award that I talked about earlier.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that and how that's been?
Angela: So a few months ago Laura mentioned that there are awards opening up for different
categories.
She told me and Grace to join because she is joining as well.
So we all submitted our entries and luckily we all got nominated to be finalists.
Nadine: So there was actually four awards, wasn't there?
So one for Laura as a broker, one for you as a loan administrator, one for Grace as
a loan administrator, and also one for POD Financial as a company.
I think that is fantastic, it's a real testament to show how you guys are working on your systems
and processes and how that's actually helping in the broking industry.
Angela: And that's out of they said 600 entries.
Nadine: Wow, so out of 600 entries, you guys got four straight up.
Fantastic, high five.
Angela: Yes.
Nadine: Alright.
I'll go to my next question now.
Can you give us a little bit of a brief outline of the actual tasks that you do for Laura
in the broking business?
Angela: So I started out as a junior admin and as a junior admin, what I do is I organize
the files as soon as documents come in in the email.
I sort them into the right client folder and I fill out lender forms so that they're ready
for the clients' and Laura's signature.
And I do research as well if Laura requires that we do as admins so that we know credit
policies for each lender and we know which lender suits each client situation.
Now, as a senior or lead admin, Laura's teaching me the credit stuff, already.
Nadine: Wow, okay.
Angela: Doing assessments.
Nadine: So that's definitely you adding value to the team, being able to do that.
So initially as well, I think all of those tasks are quite valuable.
Tell me a little bit about, you set up a little bit of a spreadsheet.
Angela: Yes.
We do make spreadsheets, me and Jolyn, especially for compliance.
Compliance is really important right now for brokers.
Nadine: Yeah.
Angela: And we have created an Excel file spreadsheet for each individual client and
each opportunity, loan opportunity that have settled.
We track according to each lender's policy what needs to be there, and what Connective
as the aggregator needs to be there as well.
So that has just been easy for the whole team to see what else is missing, what else do
we need to request from our client.
Nadine: So a nice bit of a reference point.
Okay, awesome.
How are tasks assigned to you on a day-to-day basis?
How is that handled?
Angela: So we started out as Laura getting in touch with us through Trello, Slack messages,
and letting us now what she needs done for the day.
But over time, because we've been doing it for a while now, for months and months, we
have gotten into a process of checking the emails ourselves and identifying which emails
require our attention as admin.
So even if Laura's out and having meetings, or meeting lenders, for example, we still
have work to do.
We don't just wait for her to assign the tasks one by one.
Nadine: So essentially, you're actually able to have tasks assigned to you by way of the
system that you've got set up.
Angela: Yes.
Nadine: That's fantastic.
Very very good.
Okay.
How do you find working within that structured system and process?
Angela: I think it's really, it's great, because you don't have to--there's no downtime.
There's no downtime so you know there's always work to do and you feel very useful that you
are, like what you said earlier, adding value to the business.
And having to research even without your broker telling you to do this, but you know that
you have to because you see the whole file, you see what the client wants to do, wants
to accomplish, and you know that you have to go to this website, to see the policy,
and you have to fill out this form.
Yes.
Because that's all gonna go into their file and that's upskilling yourself as well.
Nadine: Definitely, that's fantastic.
So you're actually learning on the job, while doing your job.
Excellent.
Okay.
So my last question then is, what tasks do you most enjoy and overall, what keeps you
most engaged within your role?
Angela: Okay so one of my skills I think is really attention to detail and organizing.
So the tasks that I enjoyed as junior admin was watching out for all those emails from
the clients, making sure that they're all in the right folder and just making things
organized and easy to understand by Laura, by the broker, and by the lenders as well.
Now that I'm being trained for the senior admin position, what I really like is the
assessments, researching, getting to know lender policies, and figuring out how to make
the deal work and for the file to service for the clients.
Nadine: Service ability.
Okay, excellent.
Well, thank you so much for making it all the way out here from the Philippines, we
really appreciate your time.
Angela: Thank you, I love being here.
It's fantastic.
Nadine: Yes, we love having you here.
I think that's it for me, is there anything else you wanted to kind of mention to us?
Angela: I just feel that Affordable Staff is doing a really great job of selecting the
right VA's for each client in the office.
And it is a secure environment as it is office based, it's paperless.
And this industry, the finance VA industry, especially, there are a lot of opportunity
to grow in the business, I think.
Nadine: I think there's a lot of opportunities, yep.
Definitely for someone with so much drive as well, you know, and not only within Affordable
Staff but within your client's business as well.
So yes, thank you again for being so amazing.
Angela: Thank you.
Nadine: This is Nadine from Affordable Staff signing off.
And that's it.