Yellow Brick Road executive chairman
Mark Bouris told
Australian Broker that the financial powerhouse is “absolutely open to buying more things”.
Just ahead of the
Australian Financial Review piece, which reported that YBR is believed to be in talks with
Homeloans Ltd regarding a merger, Bouris spoke out about future acquisitions in an interview with
Australian Broker.
“What we try to do is achieve economies of scale; scale is the game. To be in this industry you have got to have scale, you can’t do it otherwise. For us, you have to have scale or you have to be part of scale, which is why [brokers] join aggregation, because they become part of [Vow’s] scale,” he said.
“What [Yellow Brick Road] likes to do is own the scale, and we have to have more scale… The more acquisitions you make, the bigger your scale becomes, the better your profitability becomes.”
“We are pretty regulated these days: there’s credit licenses, there’s compliance environments, there’s accounting environments … there’s HR environments, there’s occupational health and safety – all of which [brokers] have to do no matter what. So, it makes sense to run economies of scale and have central services to do those things.
“…What we are try to do is bring to the game a whole lot of economies of scale and that allows us to add value to those things [brokers] require … to broaden the appeal to their customers.”
Bouris did not reveal who the mortgage and wealth planning group was in talks with, however in a release after the AFR report, YBR would not confirm or deny any discussions with Homeloans.
"The company is often in discussions with many parties on a range of matters. Any current discussions are incomplete and strictly confidential. No agreements have been entered into which would require disclosure to the market," YBR said in an ASX release.
