Major brokerage appoints its former CEO to board

Mr Ganis joined the board of the recently privatised brokerage Yellow Brick Road Holdings on Monday (15 January).

Mr Ganis was the CEO of Yellow Brick Road, before stepping down from his position in May 2019 after the financial services company announced it would be disposing of its head office wealth business functions and focus on mortgages.

He has worked in a range of financial services institutions over his 40-year career and retired from full-time executive responsibilities in 2017 after 28 years at Macquarie Group, including 17 years as executive director.

He co-founded and established Macquarie Group’s mortgages and securitisation business in the early 1990s.

He continues to be an active chair and non-executive director for various ASX and private companies – including broking group N1 Holdings – in addition to numerous advisory and consulting roles and has specialised in management and has experience in regulatory, risk, and compliance.

In a statement announcing the new appointment, the group said: “Frank will be familiar to most staff and broker partners in being a former CEO of the YBR Group. He is therefore very familiar with our organisation.

“We are excited to have Frank back in the YBR Group.”

The YBR Group – which includes major broking franchise Yellow Brick Road, aggregator Vow Financial, and non-bank lender Resi – recently went private again for the first time in 15 years, after it announced the “strategic decision” to delist from the ASX in September.

The board said the move to go private would be “in the best interests of the company and its shareholders”, with chairman Mark Bouris adding that he believed the group’s trading price did not reflect its underlying value and is an impediment to the brokerage raising capital.

It was removed from the official list in November 2023.

The group’s most recent financial results showed that its full-year settlements dropped 7.2 per cent from the record $21.4 billion in the financial year 2022 to $19.9 billion in FY23.

Its total loan book grew 6.8 per cent, reaching $63 billion.

The group has said that it aims to grow broker numbers and leverage the group’s recent investments this year.

The YBR brokerage brand aims to particularly grow its franchise network through “targeting experienced banking professionals” and increase the number of YBR-branded corporate branches.

The group stated the ambition for its own lending product Resi was to increase partnerships with external broker groups to increase the reach of the brand.

Meanwhile, Vow Financial’s focus for FY24 was to increase broker recruitment and develop its non-mortgage product growth.

[Related: YBR removed from ASX]