Lendi breaks the fintech mould

It’s arguably one of the oldest fintech start-ups in Australia and is now likely to play an important role in guiding the fortunes of Fairfax’s real estate business ­Domain. However, Sydney-based Lendi isn’t keen on the oft-­repeated disrupter tag.

Company co-founder and managing director David Hyman told The Australian the idea behind the start-up was to untangle the vast volume of data home buyers have at their fingertips when it comes to getting a mortgage.

According to Mr Hyman, while there’s a lot of information out there for existing and aspiring home owners the overall process of getting a mortgage remains grossly overcomplicated.

“The experience is poor,” Mr Hyman said. “Not just for home-loan seekers, but also for the brokers trying to serve them.”

Mr Hyman along with his fellow co-founders Sebastian Watkins, Martin Lam and Mark Kalajzich have all had first-hand experience of tackling the complexity, which they put to full use in building Lendi.

“When we started in 2013, there was a real break in data and our idea was to leverage the information and really focus on the ­experience,” he said.

“I had no idea what the term fintech meant, all we could see was that here was a trillion-dollar market that was extremely fragmented.”

Since then, Lendi has captured 1 per cent of the home loan market, and has aspirations to reach 5 per cent within five years, putting it on a par with Aussie Home Loans, now owned by Commonwealth Bank. Along the way it has also managed to attract some heavyweight investors to its books, with Macquarie Bank, listed investment manager Bailador and listed home loan provider Pepper Group all on board.

However, the biggest coup for Lendi came this month with the online broker signing a deal with Fairfax’s Domain to power its Loan Finder offering, an attempt by the online real estate listings business to add extra value to its platform.

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Source: Lendi breaks the fintech mould – The Australian