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Liberty Financial is hungry for a bigger slice of the investor home loan market as the APRA-regulated banks pull back on landlord lending.
Liberty Network Services managing director Brendan O’Donnell says the group still has plenty of capacity to write mortgages for property investment and sees huge upside potential for the non-bank in the changing regulatory environment.
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Mr O’Donnell acknowledged APRA’s recent regulatory measures but told The Adviser that, in his opinion, demand for property investment will not see any significant contraction as a result of the crackdown.
“There is a need to have lenders out there who can meet that demand and certainly from a Liberty point of view we are ready and set to do that,” he said.
“There are always winners and losers in times of change and right now, in the short term, we are here to write more business.”
Liberty’s rates are looking favourable relative to the majors and in some cases are cheaper than the big four, Mr O’Donnell said.
Liberty’s standard variable rate is 4.24 per cent (with a comparison rate of 4.31 per cent) on loans with an LVR of 80 per cent, and under and 4.74 per cent (with a comparison rate of 4.81 per cent) on loans with an LVR over 80 per cent.
However, while the non-bank has plenty of capacity to grow its investor loan book, Mr O’Donnell says that growth must be carefully managed.
“We’ve got to be careful that we manage our service levels and expectations and that we manage growth in that particular category,” he said.
“Obviously we’ve got a wide range of asset classes and want to grow a good balanced book at Liberty. So we need to be careful about how we grow our investment portfolio but certainly we’re open for business.”
[Related: Industry heavyweights weigh up impacts of lending changes]
