Headquarters:
Sydney
Year founded:
2021
Number of employees:
600+
Phone:
0403 969 680
Email:
courtney.brennan@helia.com.au
Website:
lendigroup.com.au
LinkedIn:
au.linkedin.com/company/lendi-group
“What makes our approach unique is the collaborative culture of innovation that we have cultivated, where ideas are encouraged, creative thinking is nurtured and people are empowered to develop hypotheses and take smart risks”
DAVID HYMAN,
LENDI GROUP
David Hyman
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Sebastian Watkins
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Travis Tyler
Chief Product Officer
Leadership
David Hyman is the co-founder and CEO of Lendi Group. A passionate serial entrepreneur with a unique skillset that spans across corporate strategy, technology, product, customer acquisition and operational excellence, he has spent the majority of his career conceptualising, building and scaling businesses across a number of industries.
Over 10 years ago, he co-founded Lendi, one of the fastest-growing fintech groups with a mission to change the way Australians get home loans by disrupting the status quo in the mortgage market using technology. In 2021, Lendi merged with Aussie to form Lendi Group, and since then, Hyman has led the business through significant transformation and innovation, with the mission changing the way Australians experience property lending for good.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
David Hyman
Sebastian Watkins is the co-founder and COO of Lendi Group. He has 15 years of experience across sales, customer acquisition, operations and strategy, having built and scaled businesses across a number of different industries.
At Lendi Group, Watkins’ role sits across many customer-facing and operational business units in Australia and the Philippines. He is passionate about closing the gaps between teams, technology and customers to drive better outcomes for customers and brokers alike.
Prior to establishing Lendi in 2013, Watkins was sales director of Living Social, executive director of Adepto Group and had held multiple other leadership roles.
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Sebastian Watkins
As Lendi Group’s chief product officer, Travis Tyler leads the firm’s “Experience” org, which oversees the technology, growth and engineering teams as well as the ongoing maintenance, optimisation and enhancement of its proprietary platform.
Tyler brings a wealth of experience from Zip Co as their chief product officer and as a former chief product and marketing officer at neobank 86400, where he was part of the founding team and was instrumental in scaling their business prior to the NAB purchase. Prior to these roles, Tyler was a banking executive, bringing in over 20 years of banking experience from Westpac and St. George Bank, with a great deal of that time spent in mortgages. He is passionate about building, scaling and running businesses, using his deep expertise in product, marketing, design, technology and operations to do so.
Chief Product Officer
Travis Tyler
“What makes our approach unique is the collaborative culture of innovation that we have cultivated, where ideas are encouraged, creative thinking is nurtured and people are empowered to develop hypotheses and take smart risks”
DAVID HYMAN,
lendi group
“Initiatives like the Hackathon mean that everyone at Lendi Group, regardless of their role, their experience, or the team they sit on, is able to be an active participant in ideating, building and directly shaping the future of our business”
DAVID HYMAN,
lendi group
Leadership
“Initiatives like the Hackathon mean that everyone at Lendi Group, regardless of their role, their experience, or the team they sit on, is able to be an active participant in ideating, building and directly shaping the future of our business”
DAVID HYMAN,
lendi group
“What makes our approach unique is the collaborative culture of innovation that we have cultivated, where ideas are encouraged, creative thinking is nurtured and people are empowered to develop hypotheses and take smart risks”
DAVID HYMAN,
lendi group
Leadership
Brad Cramb
Chief Distribution Officer
Brad Cramb joined Aussie in 2017, bringing with him over 20 years of experience in senior leadership positions in the automotive industry. He has significant experience in expanding and supporting a national distribution network and in developing dynamic strategies to drive sales growth in small businesses and increase market share in a highly competitive environment. In his role as chief distribution officer at Lendi Group, Cramb is responsible for accelerating the group’s sales and distribution growth and has direct accountability for its network of over 1,300 brokers and 220 Aussie retail stores. On weekends, he trades his business suit for a wetsuit and can be found searching for the next big wave on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
Chief Distribution Officer
Brad Cramb
Damian Percy
General Manager, Securitisation
Damian Percy is a creative, lateral-thinking and outcomes-driven senior leader with over 20 years of experience in financial services and a deep and broad understanding of the Australian home loan market. He is a highly respected commentator and advisor to the industry, with practical expertise across all facets of the sector, including distribution, operations, product design, technology and regulation.
Percy understands that, ultimately, all business is problem-solving, and he applies his rare blend of industry expertise and innovative thinking to build strong businesses and great customer outcomes.
Percy is a past director and fellow of the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia, holds degrees in arts and law and was a founding member of the nation’s leading Elvis parody act between 1992 and 2004.
General Manager, Securitisation
Damian Percy
Lendi Group was created in 2021 following a merger between two market-disrupting firms who shared a common aim: for Australians to get better deals and rates on their home loans.
One-half of the merger Aussie, founded in 1992, is credited with bringing competition into the Australian home lending industry. Lendi, established in 2013, brought smart technology and home loan specialist advice.
Lendi Group innovated immediately with Lendi being exclusively virtual, compared to Aussie brokers accommodating in-store, face-to-face and virtual interactions.
The culmination of this process arrived in 2023, when the Aussie network of over 1,000 brokers went fully live on the new Aussie Platform. The next phase gave franchisees and brokers in retail stores access to innovative working models via the Platform Plus supported store model.
Industry data indicates the average loan takes over 20 hours of broker time to process, but with Platform and Platform Plus brokers achieve lodgement speeds up to four times quicker.
Chief executive David Hyman says, “What makes our approach unique is the collaborative culture of innovation that we have cultivated, where ideas are encouraged, creative thinking is nurtured and people are empowered to develop hypotheses and take smart risks.”
“Initiatives like the Hackathon mean that everyone at Lendi Group, regardless of their role, their experience, or the team they sit on, is able to be an active participant in ideating, building and directly shaping the future of our business”
DAVID HYMAN,
LENDI GROUP
Tony Bird
Chief Risk Officer
Mark Hewitt
General Manager, Industry and Partnership Development
Brad Wearn
Chief Technology Officer
Simon Williams
Chief Strategy & Distribution Officer, Arch Insurance International
and Active Underwriter, Syndicate 1955
Tony Bird has been working in the banking and finance industry for 25 years, predominantly in credit risk, collections and portfolio management. His strength is bringing creative, data-driven solutions to safely grow retail portfolios. He develops strong relationships with internal and external partners to maximise profit after capital charges. Bird’s management style is collaborative and focused on achieving ambitious targets.
Chief Risk Officer
Tony Bird
Mark Hewitt has a wealth of knowledge and industry experience, with 40 years of experience in financial services. He is a member of the executive team at aggregator Australian Finance Group (AFG), which he joined in 2006 as general manager of broker and residential and is currently AFG’s general manager of industry and partnership development.
Prior to joining AFG, Hewitt spent 20 years with ANZ, including four years in ANZ’s third-party distribution area, and later became national manager of key broker relationships. He has also recently been co-chair of the Combined Industry Forum and has played a key role in the industry reform process.
Hewitt’s significant skills encompass operations, communications, relationship management, credit management, asset finance, human resources, contract and sponsorship negotiation, and sales. He was named on the MPA’s Global Mortgage 100 list in both 2020 and 2021. He is also a director of the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia (MFAA), Think Tank Group and Mortgage Processing Services.
General Manager, Industry and Partnership Development
Mark Hewitt
Brad Wearn, serving as the chief technology officer, brings extensive expertise and forward-thinking approaches to the evolving landscape of IT services procurement and management. With a keen eye on industry trends and organisational needs, he recognises the shift toward purchasing IT capabilities “as a service,” acknowledging both its agility and potential security risks.
In his role, Wearn navigates the challenges posed by “shadow IT” and the impact it can have on organizational spending and security. Embracing an IT delivery model focused on flexibility and efficiency, he champions the adoption of “as a service” platforms. This approach ensures transparency in usage and enables the implementation of necessary controls to safeguard critical data and systems.
By spearheading this transformation, Wearn moves away from defending a large IT budget toward facilitating the adoption of tailored technology solutions aligned with evolving business needs. With an unwavering commitment to driving innovation and maximizing value, he sees himself at the forefront of an exciting journey as a CIO, navigating the ever-changing landscape of technology with enthusiasm and expertise.
Chief Technology Officer
Brad Wearn
Kimi leads the Estate Planning and Wealth Protection team and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. She understands the complex and delicate nature of family estate planning, the technical requirements around probate and estate administration, and the importance of preserving wealth for future generations. Her advice is accurate, commercial, strategic and tailored to each situation.
Partner
Kimi Shah
Kimi leads the Estate Planning and Wealth Protection team and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. She understands the complex and delicate nature of family estate planning, the technical requirements around probate and estate administration, and the importance of preserving wealth for future generations. Her advice is accurate, commercial, strategic and tailored to each situation.
Partner
Kimi Shah
Kimi leads the Estate Planning and Wealth Protection team and is a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. She understands the complex and delicate nature of family estate planning, the technical requirements around probate and estate administration, and the importance of preserving wealth for future generations. Her advice is accurate, commercial, strategic and tailored to each situation.
Partner
Kimi Shah
Lendi Group also developed a “ways of working” (WoW) framework around ten operational principles, several of which focus on innovation, including:
• We always create, celebrate and iterate.
• We believe smart risk unlocks our ability to create and iterate.
• We drive innovation through relentless curiosity.
• We accelerate growth when we start with intuition and validate with data.
“It provides a clear framework around how our people work together, which covers everything from how we collaborate, communication tools we use, our flex first policy, prioritisation frameworks, project management and decision-making methodologies, meetings and more,” says Hyman.
In 2024, Lendi Group held its inaugural Hackathon, a voluntary two-day event. Over 110 employees participated and assembled 17 teams to develop ideas using AI tools to improve a process, create software, or design a tool.
Two of the resulting ideas were immediately introduced:
• An AI-powered broker assistant bot integrated with Slack and Microsoft Teams that fast-tracks brokers’ policy-related queries. This will make brokers and associates more efficient and unlock greater capability to provide accurate and express responses to customers, ultimately driving improved customer outcomes.
• A project to build knowledge from customer conversations. Version one can analyse conversations and summarise the next step for the customer and the broker. This innovation serves to build an understanding of common customer needs and reduce note-taking time for associates and brokers. The team is developing features like sentiment analysis, information extraction and conversation topic clusters.
The firm estimates that these tools will save:
• 8,600 associate hours annually
• 44,800 broker hours annually
• up to $2.98 million in operational costs
“Initiatives like the Hackathon mean that everyone at Lendi Group, regardless of their role, their experience, or the team they sit on, is able to be an active participant in ideating, building and directly shaping the future of our business,” says Hyman.
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Lendi Group also developed a “ways of working” (WoW) framework around ten operational principles, several of which focus on innovation, including:
• We always create, celebrate and iterate.
• We believe smart risk unlocks our ability to create and iterate.
• We drive innovation through relentless curiosity.
• We accelerate growth when we start with intuition and validate with data.
“It provides a clear framework around how our people work together, which covers everything from how we collaborate, communication tools we use, our flex first policy, prioritisation frameworks, project management and decision-making methodologies, meetings and more,” says Hyman.
In 2024, Lendi Group held its inaugural Hackathon, a voluntary two-day event. Over 110 employees participated and assembled 17 teams to develop ideas using AI tools to improve a process, create software, or design a tool.
Two of the resulting ideas immediately moved into the development phase, with pilots now underway:
• An AI-powered broker assistant bot integrated with Slack and Microsoft Teams that fast-tracks brokers’ policy-related queries. This will make brokers and associates more efficient and unlock greater capability to provide accurate and express responses to customers, ultimately driving improved customer outcomes.
• A project to build knowledge from customer conversations. Version one can analyse conversations and summarise the next step for the customer and the broker. This innovation serves to build an understanding of common customer needs and reduce note-taking time for associates and brokers. The team is developing features like sentiment analysis, information extraction and conversation topic clusters.
The firm estimates that these tools will save:
• 8,600 associate hours annually
• 44,800 broker hours annually
• up to $2.98 million in operational costs
“Initiatives like the Hackathon mean that everyone at Lendi Group, regardless of their role, their experience, or the team they sit on, is able to be an active participant in ideating, building and directly shaping the future of our business,” says Hyman.
Lendi Group also developed a “ways of working” (WoW) framework around ten operational principles, several of which focus on innovation, including:
• We always create, celebrate and iterate.
• We believe smart risk unlocks our ability to create and iterate.
• We drive innovation through relentless curiosity.
• We accelerate growth when we start with intuition and validate with data.
“It provides a clear framework around how our people work together, which covers everything from how we collaborate, communication tools we use, our flex first policy, prioritisation frameworks, project management and decision-making methodologies, meetings and more,” says Hyman.
In 2024, Lendi Group held its inaugural Hackathon, a voluntary two-day event. Over 110 employees participated and assembled 17 teams to develop ideas using AI tools to improve a process, create software, or design a tool.
Two of the resulting ideas were immediately introduced:
• An AI-powered broker assistant bot integrated with Slack and Microsoft Teams that fast-tracks brokers’ policy-related queries. This will make brokers and associates more efficient and unlock greater capability to provide accurate and express responses to customers, ultimately driving improved customer outcomes.
• A project to build knowledge from customer conversations. Version one can analyse conversations and summarise the next step for the customer and the broker. This innovation serves to build an understanding of common customer needs and reduce note-taking time for associates and brokers. The team is developing features like sentiment analysis, information extraction and conversation topic clusters.
The firm estimates that these tools will save:
• 8,600 associate hours annually
• 44,800 broker hours annually
• up to $2.98 million in operational costs
“Initiatives like the Hackathon mean that everyone at Lendi Group, regardless of their role, their experience, or the team they sit on, is able to be an active participant in ideating, building and directly shaping the future of our business,” says Hyman.