ANZ purchases $40m stake in brokerage

ANZ’s $40 million investment in Lendi makes it the latest lender to assume a stake in the brokerage, joining the likes of Macquarie and Pepper.

In a statement to The Adviser, Lendi co-founder and managing director David Hyman said that such investments have allowed the brokerage to pursue initiatives designed to produce better customer outcomes.

“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,” Mr Hyman said.

“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.”

Prior to ANZ’s investment in Lendi, the major lender was the only big four bank without a stake in a third-party mortgage business.

However, of the big four banks, ANZ has the largest exposure to the third-party channel, with 55 per cent of its mortgages originated through the broker network.

Morgan Stanley Research’s Roadmap to Branchtopia report, released in October 2018, found that mortgage sales through ANZ’s branch network were the least efficient of the big four banks, with $35 million in home loans settled per branch in the 2017 financial year (FY17).

According to Morgan Stanley, ANZ “relied more on mortgage brokers” relative to other major banks.

ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott also told the financial services royal commission in November 2018 that he had questioned whether the services offered through a branch network could be offered more efficiently through other “avenues”, making specific reference to home loan origination via the broker and mobile banking channel.  

ANZ declined The Adviser’s request for additional comment.  

[Related: Major bank ‘highly dependent’ on brokers, says CEO]