Financial services provider ANZ Group has made a A$40m ($28.7m) equity investment in Australia-based online mortgage broker Lendi, it confirmed to The Adviser on Tuesday.
The bank is now the second largest investor in Lendi, behind investment and banking firm Macquarie Group. The news was first reported by Australian Financial Review on Monday.
Founded in 2013 as Australian Credit and Finance, Lendi combines smart technology with in-house experts to match customers with loan products from more than 35 lenders including ClickLoans, ING, Bank Australia, Pepper Loans, AMP, WestPac and Commonwealth Bank.
The company reportedly received $19.2m in December 2017 through an oversubscribed funding round that included existing shareholders and several undisclosed blue-chip institutions, according to the Australian Broker.
Macquarie Bank, investment management firm Bailador and loan provider Pepper Group all held stakes in the business at the end of 2017, though it is not clear when they made their initial investments.
Lendi had previously raised A$6m in funding in 2014, adding to the A$3.1m it had already collected from several unnamed high net worth investors.
David Hyman, Lendi’s co-founder and managing director, told The Adviser: “Having a number of financial institutions as strategic investors with minority, non-controlling stakes since 2014 has allowed Lendi to drive product innovation in the home loan space.
“Those financial institutions having alignment at an equity level has allowed us to move faster, more decisively, with the right stakeholders on both sides engaging to ultimately drive better consumer outcomes through an increasingly more digital home loan experience.”