It has added Swift and Rooftop Mortgages to its lender panel to ‘bulk up’ its product offering, increasing its panel to 13. Optoma hopes the tie-up will help secure business that is currently slipping through its net on the buy-to-let and non-conforming side.
The addition of both lenders is part of a re-launch of Optoma’s non-conforming offering and Andrew Seymour, chairman of Optoma, admitted the ultimate aim is to expand the business at the expense of smaller firms.
He said: “We are bringing Swift onto our UK panel and are looking to develop products with it in the near future. It has a massive appetite for expansion and we want to grow with it.
“We will be re-launching our non-conforming package with a massive campaign and we are going to get really aggressive with the market. We want to continue to grow and this will probably knock some smaller businesses out of the market.”
Seymour added: “Currently, we are growing at a phenomenal rate and we want to continue to grow. We felt we had a few holes in our panel and we have looked to fill them.
“There is currently a lot of business going to Rooftop and if we don’t offer the product then we can’t do the business. We have a good relationship with it but we didn’t have some of the buy-to-let products before, so adding those and better proc fees is very exciting for us.”
Charles Gooding, managing director at First4brokers, said: “Optoma is adding another string to its bow, which increases the value of its proposition to the firms that use it. However, it seems most packagers are looking to increase the number of lenders they deal with.”
