In the 2021 Census only 12.7% of people in Cabramatta spoke only English at home. A translator converts the questions. A broker who speaks the language and knows lending builds the application on what is actually true about the client, which is what changes the outcome.
Current as at September 2026.
In the 2021 Census, 12.7% of people in Cabramatta spoke only English at home. Twelve point seven. The rest, 43.3% Vietnamese, 9.8% Cantonese, 7.2% Khmer, 4.9% Mandarin, and a long tail after that, are buying property in a language the average loan contract wasn’t written in. Our Cabramatta lounge is in the middle of that. Burwood, where our head office is, had 32.1% Mandarin speakers and 10.8% Cantonese, with only 19.8% of residents using English alone.
So this isn’t an abstract topic for us. It’s most of our week. And the thing I’ve learned in eleven years of it is that what these borrowers get offered, when they get offered anything, is a translator. What they need is a specialist who happens to speak the language. Those are very different things.
What a translator does
A bank branch gets a customer whose English is limited and, if you’re lucky, finds a staff member or a phone service who speaks Vietnamese, and the staff member converts the loan officer’s questions into Vietnamese and the answers back. The loan officer is still the one assessing. The translator doesn’t know lending. The customer gets the same single lender’s product and policy they’d have got in English, minus some nuance. That’s better than nothing.
What a specialist does
The assessment happens in the client’s language, and that changes the whole file.
The fact find is honest. A fact find is the foundation of every application: income, expenses, assets, debts, plans. Done through a translator it becomes a form-filling exercise, and things get left out, because explaining a family business’s cash flow, or money held with relatives, or an obligation to parents overseas, is hard enough in your first language and nobody’s hiding anything. Done by a broker who speaks the language and knows lending, those things get explained properly and, more importantly, get presented to the lender in a way the lender’s policy can accept.
The structure fits the family. A lot of our clients are buying with family or for family. Parents contributing a deposit. Siblings on title. A property that will house three generations. Lenders have policies for all of this (gifted deposits, guarantors, non-occupying borrowers) and the policies differ from lender to lender. Getting the right one means understanding the family arrangement, and that’s a conversation that needs to happen in the language the family actually talks in.
And the client asks the questions they actually have. In a second language people ask the questions they can phrase, and the ones they mean go unasked. “What is the rate” is easy to ask. “If my son moves out in two years and stops contributing, what happens” is not, and it’s the more important question.
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How does this overlap with self-employed lending?
A big share of our clients in these suburbs run their own businesses: restaurants, shops, trades, transport, services. So the multicultural problem and the self-employed problem stack on top of each other. Self-employed applications are already the ones where lender policy matters most (one year of returns or two, which add-backs count, how BAS is read) and they’re already the ones most often declined over presentation.
Add a language barrier and a translator, and the odds get worse. The broker doesn’t understand the business behind the returns, so the lender sees low taxable income and says no. A specialist who speaks the language reads the financials with the client and, usually, with the accountant, and puts the real business in front of a lender whose policy can read it.
Why we hired the way we did
We didn’t set out to be a multilingual brokerage. We hired from the suburbs we work in and it happened. Now the seven brokers between them speak English, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Mandarin, and every profile page says which. If you want the conversation in Vietnamese you book An or Thy in Cabramatta, or Liam in Bankstown. Cantonese or Mandarin, Bobby in Marrickville, Louise in Bella Vista or Yixin in Parramatta. You book it like any other appointment.
Three of those brokers are Chartered Accountants, which is not a coincidence either. The community we serve runs businesses. The people best placed to read a family business’s financials in the family’s language are accountants who speak it.
What it doesn’t mean
Same lenders and same policies, and the same best interests duty, which since 1 January 2021 has applied to every mortgage broker in Australia regardless of what language the meeting was in. Nobody gets a “community rate”. What changes is that the application is built on what’s actually true about the client, which is the only way to get the right answer out of a lender.
And it doesn’t mean we’ve got every language. We don’t. Four. If yours isn’t one of them, say so and we’ll work out what’s practical.
If you’d rather do this in Vietnamese, Cantonese or Mandarin, book directly with the broker on their profile page, or call 02 9037 2825 and tell reception which language. It’s a normal request here.
Frequently Asked Questions: Multicultural Borrowers Need Specialists Who Speak Their Language
Is there a Vietnamese speaking mortgage broker in Sydney?
Yes. Brokers in Cabramatta and Bankstown work in English and Vietnamese, and you can book them directly from their profile pages.
Is there a Mandarin or Cantonese speaking mortgage broker?
Yes, in Marrickville, Bella Vista and Parramatta. Tell reception which language you would prefer when you book.
Does the language change the loan or the rate?
No. Same lenders, same policies, same best interests duty. What changes is the quality of the application put in front of the lender.
Related reading
- The 5 C’s of Credit, Explained
- Loyalty to Your Bank Is a Tax on Your Future
- The Fixed-Rate Cliff Is an Opportunity, Not a Crisis
- More on self-employed home loans
Book a broker or find a broker near you. Or call the Burwood office on 02 9037 2825.
General information only. This article does not take your objectives, financial situation or needs into account, and is not financial product, tax or legal advice. Lending criteria, fees and rates vary by lender and change without notice. Loan Lounge, Australian Credit Licence 515608.