Lendi denies major lay-offs amid $2.5m loss

Last week, Mortgage Business revealed that long-serving Aussie staffers David Smith (CEO lending), Liz Fowler (head of home lending), Brett Graham (head of operations), Cameron Baseley (Queensland state manager), and Glenn Edwards (Victoria and Tasmania state manager) left the company this week as part of a major restructure.

When asked to confirm these and other redundancies within the Aussie business, a Lendi spokesperson said: “Lendi Group cannot comment on any individual current or past employees.”

Mortgage Business has since received additional information, including leaked emails, from sources familiar with the situation. They claim that many more Aussie staff across marketing and broker support roles have also been let go.

Meanwhile, The Australian reported on Thursday (2 March) that up to 100 staff had been made redundant.

However, Lendi Group CEO David Hyman told Mortgage Business that reports of major lay-offs are “inaccurate”.

“We are not shedding roles or slimming down,” he said. “Following the recently announced restructure, we will have 400 more full-time employees in the business than we had at the time of the merger in 2021.

“We continue to grow our experience division, our customer division and our distribution division, which are all broker facing.”

The group’s experience division has recently been created as part of the restructure. Led by Travis Tyler, the division employs approximately 200 people who will service Aussie brokers.

Approximately 1,000 of the 1,300 brokers in the Lendi Group are Aussie brokers. Mr Hyman confirmed that the concept of specific Aussie roles within the business changed some time ago, with all staff servicing the broader Lendi Group.

While he accepts that some roles have been impacted by the creation of the new experience division, Mr Hyman asserts that new roles have also been created.

Marketing, product, design, and engineer roles now sit within the experience division.

Lendi co-founder Sebastian Watkins will head up the newly established customer division, which includes operational teams to support brokers. It employs approximately 400 people to support Aussie brokers.

Major growth plans

The Australian also reported that the latest Lendi accounts lodged with ASIC showed the group posted a $2.5 million loss for the 12 months ended June 30, widening from a loss of $87,432 in the year-earlier period. Net revenue rose to $182.3 million last fiscal year, while expenses increased to $228.5 million.

“When you’re looking at organisations there are a bunch of different ways you can look at them. You can look at growth rates, you can look at volume of revenue, you can look at loan book and you can look at profitability,” Mr Hyman said, adding that the company doesn’t release its profitability figures publicly.

“We are very much a growth business. We have big aspirations.

“Market share is currently 6.2 per cent and we are looking to double that over the next few years, which will be no mean feat given we are the number one retail originator of loans in the market behind the big four banks. We need good people to do that.”

New hires and closure of Aussie office 

My Hyman issued the following statements this morning via email: “As a result of the lease expiry on this [Aussie’s Parramatta headquarters], a review was undertaken on this site and the utilisation of this site is under 15 per cent on a monthly basis. Given these circumstances, and in combination with our flex first policy, we’ve made the decision to reinvest, bringing our Group Broker Network into a central location. This dedicated broker hub will now be located at Grosvenor Place, Central Sydney CBD. Lendi Group has a number of dedicated broker hubs that work in the same model located in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and East Brisbane.”

Mr Hyman also announced that Shaun Lordan (formerly CPO Nano Bank) is stepping into the new role of general manager, lending.

“The new Lending division includes a 200+ team supporting all of our brokers. A number of impacted roles in the old structure will be employed within this division,” he said.

“The creation of these divisions has replaced some smaller operational teams. While this has had an impact on some roles, the change has also opened up dozens of new roles across the Group. The aim of this is to continue to evolve our network to a best-in-market, world-class customer and broker experience, on platform, driving our next phase of growth.

“Since merger, Lendi Group has created over 400 new roles and maintained 240 Aussie stores and will continue to be recruiting within the new structure as we move to our next phase of growth.

“The structure was announced last week, and we are currently in discussion with our people to finalise many of those roles within these new divisions.”