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Private lender Knote has been around for a few years now, promoting itself as a fast and safe option for securing property and business loans.
Speed is the key part of Knote’s proposition that separates it from other lenders. Building upon this framework, the private lender is vying for expansion in Australia.
Knote’s founder and CEO Aman Singh recognised a gap in the market and pounced at the opportunity. Through the use of tech, the lender aims to be “quickest in the market and best service.”
“Coming from our IT background, we developed a couple of CRMs in different businesses. We had the IT team and we wanted to execute that plan to get something very efficient in the market. Credit decision making done through AI, learning the machines, learn human behaviour, learn from the applications, learn from our decision making, make it quicker. The simple theme was the quickest in the market and best service that we can provide. Yeah. This is two themes that we started with,” said Singh.
“Our main product was gap funding, we want to do commercial gap funding, short term loans, decision made very quickly, no nonsense, clear exit strategy. We give you the loan, our systems are very smart, they do checks very quickly, we get the reports very quickly.”
AI has become a key priority for Knote and the team is developing in-house systems to streamline processes. This is an ongoing process as AI takes time to learn and develop.
The pedigree within the company has helped propel progress forward. Singh comes from a banking background with ANZ and Knote CFO and director Kamal Bagga comes from a broking, property management, and real estate background.
With knowledge in property and finance, tech has become a top priority to help break into the Aussie market and establish a point of difference from other lenders.
Further, the team is leaning on the niche areas of lending to boost market presence. One area of focus is the ‘second mortgage.’ As Singh said, every lender scrambles for the first mortgage. Beyond that, there is an opportunity to get people who want to continue investing.
“[We offer] specialised lending. When I say specialised, first mortgage, everyone wants to do a first mortgage. But if you talk about second mortgage, caveats, or someone specialised where there is a niche in the market, not everyone can keep refinancing,” Singh said.
“Let’s say a businessman has got five properties, he just wants $100,000, he doesn’t want to refinance that. But we force them to refinance because everyone wants a first mortgage. We thought, no, we’ll play in that market, we’ll be smart, we’ll make smart decisions. So, our key was to do these specialist second mortgage, caveat loans very quickly.
“Right now, going to the market, hell break loose, it takes forever to get the second mortgage. There’s so much red tape. So that was the main market we got into and we made quick decisions and we made no-nonsense decisions and it’s working for us.”
Knote can often get a loan sorted within a couple of hours. He said this efficiency is resonating with broker partners as they’re able to quickly service clients and move onto the next.
Bagga offered further insights into Knote’s proposition, promoting that the lender isn’t policy-driven, rather is client-driven.
“Rather than just focusing on our policy, we want to come out of the box and give a solution to the customer. [Rather than] just sticking to our policy and say yes and no based on it,” said Bagga.
“Even if it’s a no, generally we hate to say no, we would like to capture business in some way by being creative about it. If the business is not meant for us, yes, we still would like to crack the bad news. But more frequently we focus on delivering the positive news to the client by being creative about their own scenario, which they may not realize that there is a possibility of doing.”
