New Lendi Group CEO David Hyman has opened up about the potential for growth in the newly merged Aussie Home Loans/Lendi business.
The merger was completed yesterday morning, with Hyman named as CEO of the newly-formed Lendi Group, where he will head a leadership team that includes executives from both Aussie and Lendi.
Aussie’s former CEO, James Symond, announced his departure last week ahead of the merger, which has seen the new amalgamated Lendi Group become the largest player on the Australian mortgage broker channel .
“It feels very, very good,” David Hyman told Australian Broker. “We’ve had great feedback from the teams in both businesses. There’s been a journey to get through. There’s a small group of us both at the Aussie and Lendi side that have been working hard at this for many, many months and then more recently with the broader team. There’s a very good feeling over here.”
Work has already begun, according to Hyman.
“I’m sitting up in the Aussie office, we had a bunch of the Lendi people up here today and we did a Day One showcase with the team to talk through the vision and we’ve truly had a running start,” he said. “Everyone’s incredibly excited about what the future holds.”
The merger seeks to bring the best of the Lendi offering and meld it with the long-established Aussie brand.
“I think, if you take a couple of steps back to look at what we’re building here, we’re taking two businesses that are at the top of their game,” explained Hyman. “The Aussie business is the leading retail brokerage in the country and Lendi is the leading online home loan platform.”
“We’re putting those two together and what we wanted to make ensure was that we brought through those strengths and the complementary nature of those businesses. What we’ve done to support that strategy is, if you fast forward, to get multiple brands operating on one technology platform and one business operating structure. We’ve organised ourselves in a way that will help to support and deliver on that strategy.”
“There’s three key divisions: Distributing, Lending and Platform. They do what they way on the tin. Distribution handles all the brokers across Aussie, Lendi and our Domain Home Loans joint venture, across all channels. Lendi has an employee and a self-employed channel, Aussie has their broker and franchise businesses. The Distribution will bring all of that together in time. Like everything, we’re taking a staged approach.”
“The Lendi platform is over 100 people working on products and technology to make that platform Aussie-ready. We’re going to be doing that in a consultative way, so if you think about what it means for Aussie and Lendi brokers from today, there’s not a lot of change outside of bringing the teams together. But as we roll out the platform to Aussie brokers and customers, the operating structures will come together more closely.”
“The Lending division is obvious: it’s built around giving strength to the existing Aussie Home Loans product that has been a key part of the Aussie proposition since the business started in 1992.”
