What is Joust & How Does it Help Mortgage Brokers?

Joust is an Australian online home-loan marketplace. Its public services include Live Auction, where participating providers submit indicative offers, and Instant Match, which can connect a consumer with up to three providers. For mortgage brokers, it is a third-party enquiry and referral channel rather than a loan recommendation, fact-find or application system.

Joust may help a brokerage reach consumers who have already entered some loan information. It does not guarantee an exclusive, contactable or suitable lead, a lender approval, a settled loan or profitable growth. A broker must still verify the information, understand the consumer’s needs, compare suitable panel options and meet every credit, privacy and best-interests obligation.

What Is Joust?

Joust’s consumer website describes a marketplace that connects home-loan customers with participating lenders and brokers. Its terms say Joust facilitates offers from third-party providers. Joust does not supply the home loan, endorse a product or decide that an offer is suitable for the consumer.

The two established marketplace paths work differently:

• Live Auction: a consumer creates a profile and participating providers can submit indicative offers. The consumer views bids on a leaderboard and may choose a provider. Current terms also describe an automatic referral to the leading provider in some circumstances if the consumer does not choose and does not opt out.
• Instant Match: a consumer supplies information and can be matched with up to three providers. The submitted personal information is shared with those providers so they can make contact and discuss options.

An offer displayed in either path is not a formal approval. The provider must complete its own assessment, verify the consumer’s details and apply current lender policy.

How Joust Benefits Mortgage Brokers

The main possible benefit is access to another source of home-loan enquiries. A Joust enquiry may arrive with basic loan and contact information, which can reduce the first round of data entry. The consumer has also taken an active step on a home-loan platform, although that action does not prove they are ready or eligible to proceed.

The channel can be useful when the brokerage has capacity to respond quickly, a lender panel that covers the expected scenarios and a reliable process for moving consented data into its approved system. It is less useful when the service area is narrow, the broker cannot use products displayed through the marketplace or the team already has more enquiries than it can serve well.

Competitive Bidding Environment

Live Auction places participating brokers and lenders in a competitive marketplace. A broker may respond with an indicative offer based on the profile available at that stage. The broker should not present a rate as available to the consumer until the relevant criteria, pricing, fees and product features have been checked.

Competition can produce useful options, but it cannot establish the best loan across the whole market. Joust’s participating providers and products define the available set. A low headline rate may also be a poor result if the loan has unsuitable features, high fees or criteria the consumer cannot meet.

Tools And Features For Brokers

Live Auction and Instant Match are the two features a broker is most likely to encounter. A separate Joust partnership page also advertises branded matching funnels, automated calling and broker operating tools. Product pages, demos and performance figures are provider claims. Confirm which service is live, included and contractually supported before building a workflow around it. A feature labelled as coming soon is not an available production tool.

• Marketplace access: confirm the loan types, locations and consumers included.
• Lead delivery: confirm whether a lead is shared, exclusive, matched, transferred or booked.
• Data fields: review exactly what the consumer supplied and what consent covers.
• Commercial terms: check charges, settlement fees, minimum spend, credits, replacements and cancellation terms for the service being purchased.
• Integration: verify the delivery method, CRM field mapping, duplicate handling, failure alerts and audit trail.

Innovations In Broker-Borrower Matching

Joust uses consumer-supplied information to display or route relevant provider offers. That can narrow an initial pool, but a matching rule is not a broker assessment. The broker needs to learn which fields drive the match, how stale data is handled and what happens when no suitable provider or product is available.

Do not treat a platform label such as matched, verified or high intention as evidence that a loan is suitable. Ask what was verified. SMS confirmation may show access to a phone number, for example, but it does not verify income, expenses, liabilities, identity, borrowing capacity or lender eligibility.

Lead Quality Checks

Lead quality should be defined by the brokerage rather than accepted as a sales label. A useful Joust lead is contactable and within the broker’s service and accreditation scope. The consumer should know that a broker may call and be willing to complete a proper discovery process.

• How old is the enquiry when the broker receives it?
• How many providers receive the same consumer details?
• Which contact, loan and financial fields were checked, and how?
• What wording told the consumer that their information would be shared?
• Can the broker reject an out-of-area, duplicate, false or uncontactable lead?
• Which source, advertisement or page created the enquiry?
• How are complaints, withdrawal of consent and data-deletion requests passed between the parties?

A broker should sample lead records and call outcomes before increasing spend. Provider testimonials, pilot results and portfolio totals may describe another broker, period or campaign. They are not a forecast for the current brokerage.

Real-Time Lead Transfers

Fast delivery can reduce the time between an enquiry and first contact. Newer Joust partnership material also advertises live transfer and appointment setting. Confirm the actual service, operating hours, consumer consent and fallback when no broker is available.

Speed helps only when the response is controlled. A lead should enter one queue, receive one owner and create one time-stamped record. If an automated call, calendar booking or CRM transfer fails, the brokerage needs an alert and a manual recovery step. Repeated contact from several systems can damage trust and create consent problems.

The Impact On Broker Productivity And Business Growth

Joust can save prospecting time if the delivered enquiries fit the brokerage and arrive with usable information. It can create more work if staff must chase duplicates, correct records, contact consumers who expected a lender or re-enter data into another system.

Measure productivity across the full path:

1. Record total Joust enquiries and the cost charged under the current agreement.
2. Separate valid records from duplicates, wrong details and out-of-scope scenarios.
3. Track contact rate, time to first response and appointments attended.
4. Record how many consumers complete discovery and receive credit assistance.
5. Track applications, approvals and settlements without treating an approval as guaranteed revenue.
6. Include staff time, software, refunds, clawbacks and any settlement-based charge.
7. Compare the cost and workload with another lead source over the same period.

Cost per lead is not enough. Cost per valid contact, attended appointment and settled loan reveal different failures. Review outcomes by source and scenario, but use enough volume to avoid drawing a conclusion from a few unusually strong or weak leads.

Working With Aggregators And Licensees

Before participating, ask the licensee and aggregators that govern the brokerage to approve the arrangement. They may need to review the provider agreement, advertisements, referral disclosure, scripts, data handling, CRM integration and any indicative offer shown to a consumer.

Clarify who owns each statement and record. The marketplace may collect the enquiry and show an offer, while the broker remains responsible for later credit assistance. Document when responsibility passes, which documents must be retained and how each party handles a consumer complaint.

A Safe Broker Workflow For Joust Enquiries

1. Confirm the product. Obtain the current provider agreement and demonstration for the specific Joust service.
2. Get internal approval. Give the licensee or compliance contact the contract, data flow, scripts and advertising material.
3. Set acceptance rules. Define locations, loan purposes, minimum information and scenarios the brokerage can serve.
4. Map consent and privacy. Record the consumer-facing notice, sharing permission, contact purpose, marketing status and deletion route.
5. Test delivery. Use approved test records to check routing, duplicates, timestamps, ownership and failed-transfer alerts.
6. Make the first contact clear. Identify the brokerage, explain why the broker has the details and ask whether the consumer wants to continue.
7. Start the broker process. Verify the information, complete the fact-find and make recommendations only after the required assessment.
8. Review the channel. Measure lead validity, consumer experience, compliance exceptions, staff time and settled-loan economics.

For a refinancing enquiry, do not assume that a lower displayed rate proves a benefit. Compare the current loan, discharge and application costs, lost features, remaining term and any extension of debt. The consumer may be better served by retaining the existing loan or negotiating with the current lender.

Common Mistakes To Avoid

• Treating a match as pre-approval: the offer is indicative and normal lender assessment still applies.
• Quoting a rate too early: pricing may depend on facts that the marketplace has not verified.
• Assuming every lead is exclusive: establish who else can contact the consumer.
• Copying consumer data without a purpose: retain only what the approved broker workflow needs.
• Using an old price or pilot result: commercial terms and performance change by service, period and contract.
• Responding through several tools: one owner and one contact record reduce duplicate messages.

Is Joust Worth Testing?

Joust may help a broker who wants an additional home-loan enquiry source and can respond, assess and report on those enquiries well. The value comes from the fit between the current Joust service and the brokerage’s panel, locations, capacity and operating process. It does not come from the marketplace label alone.

Run a bounded pilot with written success and stop criteria. Verify the current contract, protect consumer data, keep indicative marketplace offers separate from broker recommendations and compare settled-loan economics with another channel. Continue only if the pilot produces useful consumer outcomes and a sustainable return after all costs.