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Non-bank lender Liberty has acquired marketplace lender MoneyPlace in a push towards personal lending.
The move will see Liberty merging its existing personal loan product with that of MoneyPlace, which will remain an independent brand and continue to be managed by an entrepreneurial leadership team.
Liberty said there will be no impact or change to its existing personal loan customers.
Chief executive James Boyle said Liberty will help build on MoneyPlace's recent initiative of launching its broker channel with aggregators.
“Brokers are very important to MoneyPlace and over the past six months the business has had tremendous success launching its broker channel with aggregators," Boyle said.
MoneyPlace's next phase of growth involves expanding its distribution nationally through accredited brokers.
"We’ll work with the MoneyPlace team to leverage the power and reach of the broader broker distribution network,” Boyle said.
MoneyPlace connects investors with creditworthy borrowers seeking unsecured personal loans between $5,000 and $45,000 for three to five year terms.
Last year, Auswide took a controlling interest in it for a total of $14.0m. The bank announced last week that it had divested of its stake in MoneyPlace but will continue to use the marketplace lender's platform.
MoneyPlace chief executive Stuart Stoyan said the lender is well positioned to scale up and gain a meaningful share of Australia’s $100bn consumer lending market. He expects the company to take a couple of percentage points share of this market over the next three to four years.
“More borrowers view personal loans as a way to achieve their financial goals and brokers have an opportunity to engage consumers on their needs. A personal loan might be useful to replace a high interest credit card, cover the costs of a major life event or consolidate debt in order to be ‘mortgage ready’,” said Stoyan.
MoneyPlace’s proprietary technology uses 10,000 data points to give consumers a personalised interest rate. Once approved, the funds are available within 24 hours.
