A Sydney-headquartered fintech that allows users to apply for loans in under eight minutes is expanding its services with a market entry into New Zealand, following a year of major growth for its Australian operations where the LoanOptions.ai platform has a panel of more than 70 lenders including Macquarie Group, CBA, Westpac, ANZ, NAB, Latitude, Plenti and Prospa.
The loan comparison tool, which uses artificial intelligence to analyse real-time data and create personalised recommendations for clients, is set to launch with up to 20 lenders in New Zealand. Categories covered include car, business, personal, equipment, leisure assets, and non-property loans.
LoanOptions.ai was founded by Julian Fayad after almost a decade working in the finance broker industry, where he saw "a very clear gap in the technology available to service clients in an efficient and transparent manner".
"The finance application process was clunky, not mobile friendly, lengthy and often required mountains of paperwork," says Fayad, who for the second consecutive year is a finalist in the Sydney Young Entrepreneur Awards due to take place in a week's time.
"There was also an uneven playing field with financial knowledge and this meant that those who were not as financially savvy or financially literate, would likely end up with worse outcomes in terms of paying more interest than they needed to."
The service he has developed has an emphasis on transparency and being mobile friendly, with an efficient process that can provide a quote in less than 30 seconds.
"We did this by utilitising our in house built proprietary loan matching software and algorithms which leverage artificial intelligence models such as machine learning and neural networks to help match the clients individual credit profile with lenders and banks who they fit the criteria for, leading to a really high approval rate and great customer outcomes," Fayad explains.
"We also created a unique finance application that allows them to seamlessly upload documents from any of their devices."
Fayad says he is thrilled to be expanding the business into New Zealand.
"We have been proudly generating loan options that are tailored to each individual’s unique needs with complete transparency for over three years in Australia, and are very excited to offer the same exceptional service to our friends and neighbours of New Zealand," he says.
"With one simple application form, applicants can apply online in under eight minutes with no impact to their credit score."
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