REA buys into mortgage e-lodgment platform

REA aims to rapidly expand its market share in the mortgage space, that means there’s no time to rest. They have recently taken out $15 million from its cash reserves to acquire a 35 per cent interest in a mortgage e-lodgement platform called Simpology. 

Simpology is a digital loan origination platform that powers end-to-end smart loan application journey. It’s gaining traction among lenders and aggregators with users growing tenfold in less than a year. Currently, over 30 lenders and over 12,000 brokers are using the platform. 

What comes next? As part of the agreement, REA will have two seats on the board of Simpology and the e-lodgement platform would help accelerate the group’s financial services strategy. 

Gaining technological expertise

REA is always looking to improve in the areas where they can get smarter and better. Disruption is the new norm. By leveraging Simpology’s technology, REA will be able to facilitate direct transmission of digital mortgage applications to a broad range of banking and lending partners. 

REA Group CEO Owen Wilson added: “REA’s investment in Simpology reinforces our commitment to delivering the best end-to-end mortgage application solutions for consumers, our brokers and their clients, founded on choice and simplicity.”

“Our partnership will provide a step-change in the loan selection and digital application experience REA can  deliver the 12 million Australians who visit realestate.com.au each month.”

“At the same time, Simpology’s suite of digital products will deliver productivity improvements to our brokers through higher quality loan submissions resulting in less re-work, faster loan approval times and streamlined business operations, so they can spend more time with their clients,” concluded Owen.

Simpology Executive Chairman, Dave Jacobson commented: “This is a significant strategic milestone for Simpology. We look forward to working with the team at REA as their technology enabler to help bring to life their vision of building Australia’s leading financial services marketplace.”

Simpology CEO and Founder, Kate Gubbins added: “We are delighted to have an established and respected technology leader like REA invest in our business. Our team at Simpology has been working hard on innovative new solutions and the investment timing is perfect to bolster our commitment to delivering efficiencies to our partners across the industry.”

Mortgage Choice Acquisition getting finalised

Three months ago, REA Group announced that it was taking over Mortgage Choice with the proposed $244 million deal. Last week, the group took a step closer to completion as 98.51 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of the acquisition. It only needed a majority of 75 per cent to pass. <