Two former Westpac executives have raised $33 million for a home loan startup that aims to upend the mortgage lending business.
The large seed funding round was secured from New Zealand-based Bolton Equities, as the company builds out its product suite and prepares for launch.
Dubbed Verteva and founded by former Westpac bankers Andrew Walker and Chris Lumby, the firm is targeting a similar market to that already serviced by digital mortgage startup Athena Home Loans, which secured A$70 million in a Series C funding in October.
Verteva aims to offer lower-rate deals to customers with a low-risk profile. Rather than filling in endless paper forms to determine a credit score, Verteva intends to trawl through pre-existing data to build a risk profile and offer financing on-the-spot.
Having worked at a large incumbent, the founders are in no doubt that the market is ripe for a revolution. “We both became frustrated with the reliance on legacy systems and the lack of appetite for innovation, and most importantly, how this affected the customer experience,” Walker told SmartCompany. “The customer experience is not world class. It’s highly manual. I don’t think people will tolerate that for too much longer.”