The digital lender hits the milestone just a month after launching
Online mortgage lender Nano has hit $100 million in loans just a month after its launch – a milestone its CEO attributes to the digital lender’s fast processing times.
Nano is currently targeting refinancers, but will be expanding to target first-home buyers in the coming months, according to a report by The Australian. The company said that borrowers are switching from big banks to take advantage of low rates and Nano’s faster turnaround times, with unconditional approval being delivered in about 15 minutes.
Andrew Walker, co-founder and CEO of Nano, told The Australian that the speed at which the company has been able to build its mortgage book shows the potential it has to disrupt the home loan market.
“The industry is using old technology and is linear,” Walker said. “You sit in front of a broker or lending manager. They do a fact find, it goes into one of the lenders, someone approves it. The process hasn’t changed in 40 years.”
With the booming housing market increasing demand, traditional lenders’ approval times have ballooned dramatically, with borrowers often waiting a month or longer. Westpac said in May that processing times for self-employed borrowers were up to 36 days.
Walker told The Australian that the delays indicated untapped demand.
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Nano is currently targeting borrowers it considers safe, with a 75% loan-to-value ratio. What the online lender isn’t targeting, however, is the mortgage broker channel.
“[Brokers] do offer a good service that comes at a cost. Our business, we can remove the complexity,” he told The Australian. “If we can make that a 10-15 minute process, then we’re actually offering a really viable channel.”
