The curtains have finally been opened on the new aggregator body backed by Macquarie Bank Limited.
Vow Financial is the merged entity of The Mortgage Professionals, National Brokers Group and The Brokerage.
It represents more than 900 brokers nationally and as of December 2009 has a combined loan book of about $16 bn making it one of the five largest aggregators in Australia.
Once the merger has been finalised, CEO Jeff Zulman promised that value and income growth would be a priority.
"Initially, we are looking to increase value through internal growth and acquisition of other mortgage loan aggregators. Longer term our ambition is to diversify the business into the broader financial services sector and offer non-mortgage products."
Dr. Peter Neustadt, who is taking over as non-executive chairman, said that "Vow's promise to empower brokers will make it the first aggregator that's been deliberately structured to respond to their needs. It means that brokers get to choose their level of service, determine the extent to which they diversify, control the number of products they access, select their commission structure and even select the number of applications they plug into their Vow CRM platform".
Macquarie Bank Limited holds a minority interest of less than 20% in the Vow group. The founding aggregators, Dr Neustadt and Mr Zulman hold the rest of the shares.
Related stories:
Macquarie-backed aggregator revealed - The Mortgage Professionals (TMP), National Brokers Group (NBG) and The Brokerage (TB), have signed an agreement in principle to merge to form a new aggregator, to launch early next year.
Macquarie: Wonderland "a project name" - Macquarie Bank says "Wonderland" is only the "project name" of its aggregation venture and it is not yet at the stage of "names and branding".