Co-Pilot Finance and Insurance has acquired Queensland-based brokerage Loanezi, securing its brand and referral network as it pursues national expansion.
SME franchise brokerage Co-Pilot Finance and Insurance (CPFI) has acquired Queensland-based brokerage Loanezi from its founder and managing director, Renee Tocco, securing its brand and referral network as it pursues national expansion.
The transaction, completed in September for an undisclosed sum, includes Loanezi’s intellectual property, database and digital assets, alongside the brokerage’s brand.
CPFI plans to retain Loanezi’s identity while expanding the products available to its customers, with the head office initially running the business before a potential transition to a Gold Coast agency.
The acquisition comes as CPFI, founded by George Dib and Peter Magoulias in North Sydney, looks to build on a network of 15 agencies established over two years. It is targeting 100 agencies nationally and planning a future capital raise to support its next growth phase.
For Tocco, the transaction marks her second sale of Loanezi, having sold the business to Prospa in 2021 before buying it back in 2023. She is now stepping away from operational finance broking to pursue interests in allied health and healthtech.
However, the intention is for her to join CPFI as a non-executive director as the business grows and establishes a formal board.
Loanezi to retain its identity as products expand
Speaking with The Adviser, CPFI co-founder and chief executive George Dib said the acquisition brought an established business-owner customer base and vendor referral relationships into the network.
He said Loanezi would retain its own identity for the next couple of years, while CPFI sought to introduce its customers to a wider range of finance and insurance services.
“Loanezi is a direct-to-customer model with vendor relationships, as far as referral partners are concerned, so, for us, we don’t want to muck around too much with it for the first couple years,” he said.
“We’d love to leave it as is. All we’re going to do is expand the products as far as that business is concerned. So expand it out to be not just the vendors but to start really talking to these people about all the other products that we can eventually help them with via the Loanezi brand.
CPFI offers asset finance, business finance and insurance through its agency network.
Dib said its broader proposition also encompassed business acquisitions and commercial property, with the aim of giving business owners access to multiple services through the same organisation.
“Co-Pilot is built for the business owner, we focus our attention on business owners. We want to be able to create that environment where a business feels like they can come to us, and all of their needs are looked after,” Dib said.
For Tocco, the commercial fit lies in combining Loanezi’s specialist referral approach with a wider product offering than she had provided independently.
“What they have at CPFI is way more extensive than what I offered via Loanezi. I was always very niche. I believe under their model the value proposition they have to offer exceeds what I had to offer already off the front end,” Tocco told The Adviser.
“I believe that all of my referral partners are going to benefit from them a lot more.”
Head office to establish processes before agency opportunities
CPFI intends to operate Loanezi centrally during its initial ownership period, giving the team time to understand the customer base and the workings of the acquired business.
“For us, it’s very much a learning experience as well over the course of the first six months to understand what these clients are looking for,” Dib said.
“But for us, it’s also really important that head office owns it, maintains it, runs it, so that when we do start obviously giving opportunities to our agencies, they’re very equipped with the process that’s required.”
While the longer-term possibility is for Loanezi to become a Gold Coast agency, Dib said a prospective operator would need an established business of their own, with Loanezi complementing that operation.
“Loanezi will eventually be a Gold Coast agency and obviously, if someone were to take on that business, they have to already have a business, that they are running successfully,” he said.
A decade-long relationship underpins the acquisition
The transaction grew out of a relationship between Tocco and Dib stretching back more than a decade, when Loanezi referred finance applications outside its own specialisation to Dib’s former business, Amfin.
“Renee and I have known each other since my Amfin days, and Renee used to actually be quite an active referrer and supporter of ours,” he said.
He added that the brokerage’s emphasis on business owners, cash flow requirements and technology-related funding made it an attractive fit with the business CPFI was building.
“Over that time we’ve maintained contact with Renee, and we very much love the business that she’s built,” Dib said.
Tocco said her choice of buyer reflected both the trust developed through their longstanding relationship and her confidence in the network’s business model.
“The reason I approached CPFI and George specifically is George and I have been good friends and really trusted colleagues for over a decade and really I love the way he operates,” she said
“I deliberately chose them because I really believe that the model they have is viable in this changing landscape.”
Tocco added that protecting the work invested in the brand was so important that she would have considered closing the brokerage rather than selling it to someone she did not believe would build on that foundation.
National ambitions meet an established referral business
For CPFI, Loanezi adds an established brand and referral operation as the network works towards a substantially larger national presence.
Dib said the network’s approach combined ownership of its service businesses with selective recruitment, rather than seeking to bring on brokers indiscriminately.
“We’re very similar to the likes of an aggregator, the biggest difference between us and an aggregator is we own all of our business units,” Dib said.
“So whether it be asset finance, insurance, or resi, where a lot of the time they outsource that to referral partners, we own it, and more importantly, we’re not trying to bring on anyone and everyone, we want to bring on highly qualified brokers who really resonate with our strategy.”
A second sale opens another chapter for Tocco
Following the Prospa transaction, Tocco was appointed as the online small-business lender’s northern regional manager before buying Loanezi back from Prospa in 2023 and returning to broking.
She was subsequently appointed the Finance Brokers Association of Australia’s (FBAA) first national commercial and asset manager in late 2023, serving in the position until late 2024.
A self-described serial entrepreneur, Tocco’s business interests have extended well beyond Loanezi, having founded and operated five businesses across technology, finance and consulting, and also selling cosmetic surgery finance brand Medezi in 2021.
Her next direction is allied health and healthtech, with Tocco set to return to her original university studies in naturopathy after receiving a scholarship offer to continue her natural-health education.
[Related: New SME franchise brokerage launches]
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?
Make The Adviser a preferred news source on Google.
Click here to add The Adviser as a preferred news source.
