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Commercial lending is a “huge part” of Yellow Brick Road’s business and it could get bigger, Mark Bouris has said, hinting at plans to “hold those loans ourselves”.
Speaking to The Adviser following the release of YBR’s annual results, executive chairman Mark Bouris said he was “quite chuffed” with the business’ $2 million profit and noted that commercial lending played an important role in that growth.
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“It certainly was a big part of our growth last year but we're just touching the sides at this stage, we're not really into it,” he said.
“[We’re currently] building a good team around it, building commercial confidences around it and part of it for us is to educate the broker system as to how to do these things better and confidently.”
Additionally, Mr Bouris said that while YBR has “normally” pushed commercial loans out to different lenders, the business is “doing a lot better than we were doing [last year, when the business posted a $9.5 million loss]. It’s a good environment for us to be in”.
Mr Bouris said YBR can “own” the commercial space, arguing that “no one else really owns it and our brand can own that [space] quite easily”.
“A lot of our inquiries come down that [commercial] track and we normally just push those out to another lender. We get a commission for it… but we'd like to hold those loans ourselves and fund them ourselves. That's one area we're investigating,” he said.
Considering the 2017 financial year, Mr Bouris acknowledged that the business had built “a really good team” in commercial and SME lending both in the secured and unsecured spaces.
“We’re pushing down to get that product range right for ourselves,” he said, pointing out that the business was particularly strong in the secured environment.
“We’ve got the commercial stuff right but we’ve… really got to get more product alternatives for the self-employed and small business owner [clients],” he continued.
[Related: Major aggregator to roll out commercial broking platform]
