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Broker Daily recently hosted its first Commercial and Asset Finance Roundtable. Getting a bunch of brokers in a room to talk through what’s shaping the industry provided some great insight.
One lender popped up consistently over the course of the event: La Trobe. The non-bank was praised by brokers for its efficient processes.
Isabella Constantinou said her company Simplicity Loans and Advisory writes a “significant volume” through La Trobe.
“This week for example, I had a client applying SMSF, everyone else couldn’t do it, but La Trobe was on the money, they wanted to do it straight away. So, they’re good for that,” said Effie Nicol from Yellow Brick Road.
“They’ll just do things that others won’t,” said Shore Financial CEO Theo Chambers.
Things like large, low-doc commercial loans can be handled by La Trobe, whereas other lenders may not touch, said the brokers. Chambers said the maximum low-doc commercial loan is around $25 million, which he described as “crazy”.
“I don’t think they have a customer cap anymore either. So, they used to have, I think it was $50 million per client, but now, there’s no limit,” said Constantinou.
“I had a lot of major bank clients that during COVID who obviously couldn’t go there for whatever reasons. This was predominantly in the construction development side of commercial. But then once they actually end up at La Trobe, they see the benefits of the flexibility and different offerings that they have in the market.”
Flexibility can be key for a lender. The roundtable guests said that borrowers will pay a premium for flexibility.
“They’ll pay a higher rate just to get it done in a [timelier] manner. Because the cost of waiting to get it done with a major might be more expensive than the extra 1 per cent on the interest rate. But someone who’s never experienced that, getting them to move away from price being the priority is really difficult,” said Chambers.
Clearly, borrowers and brokers are seeing the value in La Trobe for commercial loans. The latest Commercial Broker Pulse from Agile Market Intelligence found the lender to be the most popular option outside the big four for commercial mortgages, with 13 per cent of commercial brokers submitting loans to La Trobe throughout the three months to January 2025.
How is La Trobe keeping people satisfied?
Speaking to Broker Daily, La Trobe’s senior manager of client partnerships, Engin Cosgun, said the simplicity of processes keeps both brokers and borrowers coming back.
“We don’t overcomplicate it like the majors. The way I sell it to my brokers is if you can do a residential loan with any non-bank, you can do a commercial loan with us. Because our commercial lending is essentially mirrored off our residential lending. The only difference is the asset being a commercial asset and where you acquire your valuation from,” said Cosgun.
“So residential loans, you acquire that from Property Hub. Commercial loans, you’re going to go straight to Velocity. That’s your platform. So, when we require evidence of rental income for residential, we request rental statement and that’s it. When you look at commercial, obviously, it’s a bit more complicated. We require a lease, three months bank statements, and a six-month ledger. Everything else outside of that is exactly the same.”
Further to this, for brokers, whether dealing with residential or commercial, the same BDM will be assigned. This means the relationships built transcend the type of loan, keeping communication strong.
“We’re the one-stop shop. So, they don’t have to go start a new relationship, we will hold their hands. The way I see our BDMs, we’re not sales guys, we’re educators. The price essentially sells itself. We just have to show them how to do it and hold their hands through it,” Cosgun said.
La Trobe doesn’t have an auto-decline system in place either, said Cosgun. This means each application is receiving attention by keeping “a human behind every loan.”
With this higher risk appetite comes a cost that’s priced accordingly. La Trobe continues to advocate effective practices for the non-bank space, which is always a positive. Without non-banks, the lending sector would be far less competitive and likely priced far higher.
[Related: Commercial and finance brokers: Lead with knowledge]
