YBR to buy mortgage manager

Speaking to Mortgage Business, YBR chief executive Matt Lawler said the group is close to acquiring a mortgage manager and will also buy a mortgage comparison website by the end of the financial year. 

“We announced in our half yearly results that we were in discussions with three targets,” Mr Lawler said.

“Vow was one of them,” he said. “There are another two that we are just finalising, one of which we are completing our due diligence on right now.”

Mr Lawler said the company is a mortgage manager with a strong retail presence across the eastern seaboard.

“The last one is a product comparison website,” he said.

“What the comparison site currently doesn’t do is provide a solution, so off the back of that we would link potential borrowers through to YBR to receive advice on a home loan,” he said.

The news comes after YBR completed its $17.6 million acquisition of mortgage aggregator Vow Financial on 18 May.

“Vow is a different model to Yellow Brick Road, so we are giving choice to which model in the group people want to go with,” Mr Lawler said.

“Yellow Brick Road is very much a wealth management model,” he said.

“If you come into the model as a mortgage broker there is no doubt you leave that at the door and become an adviser that does mortgages.”