Australian Unity Bank (AUB) has announced a new self-securitisation via their Kookaburra Securitisation Trust.
It will provide the lender with a new source of funding, creating a pathway for brokers to direct more business towards AUB.
“In layman’s terms, self-securitisation is creating a pathway for capital management capability,” said Dino Pesce, Head of Third Party Relationships at Australian Unity Bank. “It gives us further access to the RBA’s term funding facility and we’ll probably end up doing in tranches in line with our growth strategy. We may ask for a tranche in the coming months and then as our business grows, we continue to fill it up.
“We call this the Kookaburra, which is synonymous with our brand, and we’ve already received ratings from the agency S&P of 94% on $150 million of notes with a AAA rating. It’s a platform for us to do this now and grow from here.”
AUB is intending to use the cash to allow for greater volumes while maintaining their low turnaround times.
“We’ve always based our model as a high touchpoint relationship model,” said Pesce. “We’ve got very experienced sales staff, with good credit skills and who have been in the industry for quite some time. We’ve got a hand-on approach, especially with our broker partners. SLAs at the moment are a big talking point in the industry, and we’re at around 3 to 4 days, which we’ve quite proud of.”
“The last three months have seen an uplift in business but we’ve managed to hold that, which is great. We realised that beginning this self-securitisation means more numbers coming through and greater growth, so we’ve bolstered our sales team and our credit team and our operations function. We’re getting more people into the team for that next wave of growth to come.”
