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In the first quarter of this financial year, a neo-lender has seen loan origination grow by nearly 50% on the previous quarter.
Wisr, which was Australia’s first neo-lender, also saw a 22% increase in overall loan volume in the July to September period.
This is the third consecutive quarter that Wisr has recorded quarterly loan growth over 45%.
The group also announced it has surpassed $50million in loan originations since it began, with almost half of that figure written from the start of 2018.
Anthony Nantes, chief executive officer, said borrower shift away from traditional lenders, brand awareness and broadened product offerings had driven quarterly growth.
He said, “Wisr continues to attract strong creditworthy customers at a time when many traditional lenders are seeing a fall in personal finance commitments.
“This is the beginning of borrower flight from the big banks. Findings from the Royal Commission into banking have prompted more Australians to look for better deals and a fairer, more transparent approach to financial services.”
During the quarter Wisr saw a significant increase in loans for home renovation (up 26%), vehicle (up 17%) and lifestyle (up 33%) when compared to the previous quarter.
The group said it also continued to attract an increasing number of visitors through marketing activity and release of new financial services such as WisrCredit, with the volume of online visitors increasing 17% during the quarter.
WisrCredit was launched in mid-August. Nearly 10,000 visitors have since subscribed to the platform to learn more about their credit scores and information from major credit agencies and other sources during the quarter.
During this quarter, the neo-lender introduced a number of upgrades to its proprietary loan technology platform. Wisr said this resulted in an increase in more creditworthy borrowers and lower average loan interest rates.
Borrower creditworthiness during the quarter was at near record levels, with the average borrower credit score at 712, up from 675 during the same quarter this time last year.
Wisr’s Intelligent Credit Engine (ICE), which performs sophisticated credit risk analysis, identity verification, personalised interest rate modelling and institutional lender matching, can now draw from a wider range of data sources to make lending decisions.
The lender is now able to automatically pull down two years of historical transactional data into ICE to better predict the future financial behaviour of potential borrowers.
The ICE algorithm then synthesises up to 110 data points to determine borrower suitability and personalise the interest rate.
Nantes said, “Wisr puts the financial wellness of our customers at the centre of everything we do and we have been vigilant in the area of responsible lending through initiatives such as our platform improvements.
“We continued to deliver consistently strong credit quality, exceeding the target for arrears and book performance and continued to attract more prime customers. Today Wisr customers have both higher income and credit scores than the national average.”
