$2B in loans closed. On one rebuilt HubSpot.
A mortgage brokerage that doubled its team in six months while its CRM stayed where it was. Here is what it took to catch up.
- Industry
- Mortgage broking
- Hubs
- Sales, Marketing, Data and Commerce
- Scope
- Loan process, partner object, integrations and AI
- Project lead
Harry Spicer-Short- Location
- Australia
01 The briefRebuild the loan process around automation, give referral partners a proper record in HubSpot, and put the rest of Flint's HubSpot subscription to work, without interrupting a single day of lending.
A team twice the size, on a CRM a year behind.
Flint Group is an Australian mortgage brokerage. Its brokers are paid on commission, so an hour of admin comes straight out of their pay, and a missed follow-up can mean a lost loan.
Flint set up HubSpot when it launched in 2024. By late 2024 the team had doubled in six months, and the CRM still reflected the business of a year earlier. Critical processes ran on manual work and spreadsheets, and Enterprise features Flint was already paying for were not being used.
New brokers learned the job from the top performers, which took those brokers out of their own deals for hours every week. And the referral partners at the heart of Flint's pipeline lived in Excel. Deals arrived by email, phone and one-off forms, with no consistent record of who had sent what, how much of it settled, or which partners were drifting away.
Why it took a rebuild. It looked, at first, like a handful of configuration tweaks. Once the work started it proved to be several layers deep, across the loan process, the partner data, the integrations and the reporting, and all of it had to change while day-to-day lending carried on.
What Flint needed
- More than Sales Hub. Sales, Marketing, Data and Commerce working together.
- Every tool connected. Slack, Dialpad, Sinch SMS and Broker Engine, Flint's broker software.
- A home for referral partners. Built for how fast that network was growing.
- Reports they could trust. Validation rules and required fields at the points that matter.
Every referral partner, on a record of their own.
The centre of the build is a Partnerships custom object: a record type made for Flint, sitting in HubSpot beside contacts, companies and deals, with one record for every referral partner.
Each partner has its own branded form. A submission creates a deal automatically and updates that partner's record by matching its ID, so partner data no longer waits for a weekly update in a spreadsheet. Because deals, partners and contacts are linked in both directions, Flint can track each partner's total referrals, settlement and close rates, and how often they submit.
The partner's last submission date then moves the partnership through five stages on a timer. When a partner changes stage, the Partnership Manager gets a Slack message, so a partner who has gone quiet is followed up before the relationship lapses.
What the data showed. With every partner on a record, it became clear that 20% of partners were sending 60% of referrals. That finding underpinned a new tiered partner program with targeted benefits.
The loan process, rebuilt around automation.
Flint had been using HubSpot mostly for basic pipelines. The rebuild put four hubs to work, with Data Hub underneath keeping every record clean enough to report on.
Sales Hub
A loan process that moves on the right data, so deals do not stall.
- Deal stage playbooks with required fields at key checkpoints
- Sequences from the right broker when a deal reaches a stage
- Deal stages that move on key events and data
- A private pipeline for a new paid business line
Marketing Hub
Nurture for every loan type, and a way back for people who drop off.
- Nurtures by loan type and buyer stage
- New subscription types, partners included
- Multi-step forms for better applications
- Form-abandonment workflows
- A "Learn" content hub for search and borrower education
Data Hub
Clean data, and every tool connected to it.
- Formatting and validation rules across every hub
- Dialpad call data into HubSpot
- Sinch SMS for document collection and updates
- Slack for internal alerts
- Broker Engine through Zapier, in both directions
- Dashboards for leadership and operations
Commerce Hub
Invoices and payments inside HubSpot, in place of a patchwork of outside tools.
- Invoicing and payment processing
- Payment status for finance and operations
- Automated reconciliation workflows
The sequences are the part brokers notice. When a deal reaches a stage with the right properties, HubSpot enrols it in a personalised sequence from that deal's broker, so a loan no longer stalls because someone was too busy to send an email.
20% of partners were sending 60% of the referrals.
Referral partners still tracked in a spreadsheet?
AI where it saves a broker's time.
Records that fill themselves in. HubSpot's data enrichment adds company and contact details to records automatically. Flint estimates it saves 15 to 20 hours of manual data entry a month, and more complete records make segmentation and reporting more reliable.
Long threads, summarised. Breeze summary cards give a deal owner the gist of a long email and SMS thread without reading all of it. Brokers estimate it saves two to three minutes per deal review, which across more than 200 deals comes to six to ten hours a month.
The richer data feeds the same dashboards, so Flint can target segments, prioritise deals and judge partner performance more accurately. Work on Breeze agents and behavioural events is continuing.
Four goals. Here is how they went.
What Flint asked for before the build started, and where each one stood after the rebuild.
Goal 01
A loan process that fits the tools
We built playbooks, required fields and automated stage moves that guide a new team member through each loan.
75%
faster onboarding for new team members. New brokers used to learn from the top performers, which took those brokers out of their own deals for hours every week.
Goal 02
The whole Enterprise subscription in use
We set up Sales Enterprise sequences and workflows, and put the Marketing, Data and Commerce Hubs to work.
100%
staff adoption. HubSpot is now the one system the whole team works in, instead of the team working around it.
Goal 03
Follow-up nobody has to chase
We set up stage-based sequences, Slack alerts, partner communications, and summary cards on long threads.
6-10
hours a month back from summary cards alone. Automating follow-up, notifications and partner communication removed hundreds of manual tasks a month, so brokers spend the time on their clients.
Goal 04
Dashboards the whole company can read
We built dashboards for loan volume, conversion, partner performance and pipeline health.
20%
of partners found sending 60% of referrals. Flint launched a tiered partner program on that evidence, lifting the quality and volume of referrals.
Since the work began, Flint has closed $2B in loans.
A CRM that was straining under a team twice its size now runs sales, marketing, partnerships, finance and reporting. Customers and partners get a better experience of dealing with Flint.
This was the second phase of Flint's work with Neighbourhood. The first, onboarding Flint's team onto HubSpot, is its own case study.
“Above and Beyond - Exceptional Service and Real Results!! Working with Neighbourhood (and in particular, Harry) has been absolutely wonderful. From the very beginning, Harry has been proactive, knowledgeable, and incredibly easy to work with. His ability to understand our business goals and translate them into clear, actionable HubSpot strategies has made a huge difference to how we operate day to day. Harry's support has been exceptional; he's responsive, patient, and genuinely invested in helping our team succeed. The improvements we've seen in automation, reporting, and lead management are a direct result of his expertise and hands-on approach. Beyond the technical work, Harry and the Neighbourhood team have been true partners. They care about outcomes, celebrate wins with us, and continue to push for ways we can improve. We couldn't recommend them more highly.”
L. Williams
Senior Client Service Manager, Flint
Who ran it
Harry Spicer-ShortAI & Digital Strategist
Led the build of four hubs working together: the loan process, the Partnerships object, the integrations and dashboards.
HubSpot Impact Award winner, Neighbourhood since 2023
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