Listed lender posts 171% surge in revenue

In a trading update on Wednesday, DirectMoney announced it generated revenue of $1.2 million during the financial year to 30 June 2016, an increase of 171 per cent compared to the prior corresponding period.

The group said it engaged with approximately 9,500 unsecured personal loan applicants during the year and wrote $11.2 million of new unsecured personal loans.

Chief executive Peter Beaumont described the year as “one of establishment and significant achievement, consistent with the company investing to achieve its vision and delivering on a mission of offering personal loan borrowers and investors a far better deal than that offered by traditional financial institutions”.

The group said its strategy to achieve its vision of becoming Australia’s most respected and innovative online marketplace is centred on applying technology to grow loan volumes.

“Technology is a big piece of this,” Mr Beaumont told Mortgage Business, “we’re using technology to enable our business and particularly improve customer experience”.

“There continues to be a huge opportunity to disrupt the personal loan market with technology — the journey has just begun,” he said.

DirectMoney accelerates partnerships
Earlier this year, DirectMoney inked a loan referral agreement with MyState Bank.

A non-exclusive for both parties, it allows the online lender to potentially offer its direct channel personal loan applicants with an alternative financing option.

In February the company sold a $5 million loan portfolio to Macquarie Bank Limited which provided DirectMoney with funds for additional lending and crystallised revenues from loan establishment fees and broker fees included in the loan principal amounts.

“We are currently in discussions with a number of institutional parties around establishing larger funding facilities,” Mr Beaumont explained to Mortgage Business.

“We’re also accelerating the marketing of our DirectMoney personal loan fund, which is a structure that allows retail and wholesale investors to invest in our loans and increasingly that is going to be an important source of funding for our business,” he said.

The group said its vision is to grow to having more than $500 million of loan assets under management.

[Related: MyState inks loan referral deal with DirectMoney]