Aussie Home Loans boosts profits
AUSSIE Home Loans Group’s aggressive expansion has helped bump up its annual profit despite stagnant east coast housing markets.
The mortgage lender and broker formed by multimillionaire John Symond today posted a 44 per cent rise in net annual profit for 2005/06 to $19.7 million.
Aussie said it processed more than $10 billion worth of housing loan applications throughout the year with the average loan size increasing to $242,000, which is higher than the Australian Bureau of Statistics average of $221,000.
Mr Symond told AAP that even though the Perth residential property market was “going gangbusters”, challenging conditions in New South Wales had made the overall situation tough.
But he said the unlisted company was able to maintain profit growth employing more people and rolling out more branches.
“Our mortgage writers don’t write any more business but there’s more of them and we’re touching more people,” Mr Symond said.
In the year to June 30, Aussie increased its sales force by 19 per cent to 600 mortgage advisers.
“We have also very successfully rolled out about 14 new franchise businesses at a rate of about one a month,” Mr Symond said.
“These have mostly been in parts of regional Australia we have not serviced before so more consumers are being touched by the Aussie brand.”
Aussie’s credit card business is also growing fast and now has more than 100,000 customers, Mr Symond added.
Aggressive growth will continue in 2007 through the rollout of more franchise businesses and the establishment of new products.
Capital expenditure over the next 12 months is expected to hit about $10 million.
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