Aussie fintech Verteva lands $21.4m to digitise home lending market
Verteva, an Australian fintech looking to digitise the home lending industry, has landed AUD 33 million ($21.4 million) in a Series A funding round led entirely by New Zealand investment group Bolton Equities.
The 2019-founded start-up is headed up by two former Westpac execs, Andrew Walker and Chris Lumby, and the fresh capital will go towards the launch of its digitised home loan solution.
The pandemic has helped prove the business case for a fully online home lending solution
Targeting the low-risk end of the market, the Sydney-based fintech wants to use pre-existing data to deliver its loans, rather than relying on mortgage brokers and branches which make up the paper-heavy, face-to-face mortgage market of today.
“Where the data exists, we’re essentially going to use that data, rather than ask the customer to go and try to find it, or make a guess,” Walker tells Smart Company.
“It’s more accurate, and allows us to create a much better experience, and removes the need for people to meet physically.”
Raising funds in the middle of a global pandemic hasn’t been easy for the start-up, but it has helped prove the business case for a fully online home lending solution.
“When you take the large majority of the world and put them in time out, and force them to re-engineer their lives and live them all online […] it is similar to pouring kerosene on the fire of digital acceleration,” says Walker.
Bolton Equities CEO Chris Dinnen said the “strength and experience” of Verteva’s leadership team was what what swung the investment over other companies looking to disrupt the lending industry.
Aussie fintechs have still been landing big investments despite the pandemic. Judo, a neobank for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) raised $147 million and hit unicorn status last week.
And fellow neobank Xinja landed $255 million at the end of March from Emirates’ World Investments (WI), an investment group based in Dubai.
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