Multimillion dollar facility will help non-bank lender's growth plans
National Australia Bank has given non-bank lender Plenti a $100m warehouse funding facility.
In a statement to the ASX, Plenti CEO Daniel Foggo said:
“This facility marks another important milestone for Plenti. As well as adding further impetus to our exceptional growth, it makes our business more resilient by materially improving the economics on new loans, while further diversifying our funding sources.”
The NAB funding will cost Plenti around 3% per annum, and is intended to be used for renewable energy and personal loan origination. The warehouse funding has a minimum 5% equity funding requirement.
The news comes as Plenti also announced successful upsizing of its existing $150m secured automotive loan warehousing to $275m.
Plenti was first launched as Ratesetter – a peer-to-peer lending company that was the Australian spin-off from Retail Money Market’s 2009 established Ratesetter in the UK. The UK business was acquired by Metro Bank in September 2020.
Under the Ratesetter banner, the company announced a partnership with PLAN Australia in late 2019 to make its unsecured personal loans and car loan products available to the aggregator’s brokers. The lender is now on the panel of at least 10 of Australia’s aggregator groups.
Plenti listed on the ASX in the same month that the UK business was acquired, and shares suffered a thrashing as its $1.66 offer price slumped to $1.34 by mid afternoon – 19% down on the original offer price.
It currently has a loan portfolio of $435m, producing annual revenues of $26m.
NZ educated Co-founder and CEO Foggo worked at Barclays in Sydney, and Rothschild in The City pre Plenti.
