Anne-Marie Syme

Ms Syme has extensive corporate management and business development experience within the banking and finance sectors and currently works, or has worked in Director and Executive capacities with several companies and organisations throughout Australia. These include Insurance, Liquor, and Information Technology, Human Resources and business and corporate coaching industries.

After a career with BankWest, Ms Syme started The Loans Café in 1998, pioneering the first retail/shopfront mortgage broking company in Australia. In March 2000, The Loans Café partnered with another broking company to form Finance & Systems Technology Pty Ltd (F.A.S.T.) FAST is an aggregation company in the third party banking sector with funds under management totalling in the billions. In September 2007, Ms Syme became the principal owner of FAST (81%) with the remaining ownership (19%) owned by Challenger. Anne-Marie remained as Executive Chairman of F.A.S.T until the sale of her shares and those of Challenger Mortgage management to National Australia Bank in January 2010.

Past achievements for Ms Syme include being first woman elected to the Western Australian Executive Council for the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) in 1998 and being elected as the President of the MFAA in WA in October 2001and consequently resided on the national council for a period of four years.

Whilst President of the MFAA – WA Chapter, Ms Syme also served as a member of the Western Australian Regional Liaison Council of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) for a period of three years.

Ms Syme is a current State Tribunal member of the MFAA’s COSL team which is a dispute resolution scheme dealing with misconduct in the third party banking sector. Ms Syme is also the ‘industry expert’ chosen for the state of Western Australia on behalf to the MFAA dealing with clients that discover issues pertaining to conflicts within the broking industry that have not yet been formally lodged as a complaint with the Tribunal.

In 2009, Ms Syme won an award for “Most Inspiring Woman of the Year – Business” and was presented this award in the presence of Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce – Governor General of Australia.

In April 2012, Ms Syme was only one of four Australians to be accepted into Harvard Business School to study ‘Leadership Best Practices’ a course attended by the world’s best CEO’s and business leaders.

Ms Syme is featured in several books – “Secrets of Inspiring Leaders Exposed”, “Leadership Revelations – An Australian Perspective” and most recently, “Leadership Revelations 2 – How Australians lead in Crisis”. As a result Ms Syme speaks to many organizations on the topic of women achieving success in the corporate sector.