Career Advice - Mortgage Advisor

I hope someone would be able to provide me with advice on becoming a self-employed mortgage advisor

After ten years running an IT consultancy I've decided on a career change, and will shortly have completed CeMap 1,2 and 3. It also seems advantageous to gain the CerGi Qualification. My aim is to become a self employed Mortgage advisor, either as a sole trader or as part of a network. I do realise that I need to gain as much real life mortgage experience as possible under experienced supervision for the next couple of years.

My query is about how to gain that experience. A year or two employed in an estate agency / bank is one option, but I am keep to explore any self employed options having been used to working this way for so many years. There seems to be a large number of networks such as Sesame, Openworks, Great British Finance. There's a also a franchise called direct mortgages

) that appears to offer support. There's also a stepping stones programme with New Leaf Financial services which appears to offer training and support for the first year in return for a fee and commission split.

I will be speaking to these companies in the future but hope that I can gain some unbiased advice first. Any recommendations on training, network, what you feel about your current career etc would be most welcome. Thanks for your time.