Three years into its rebrand, MA Money plotting a bold move into commercial finance in response to broker demands
A lot has changed in the three years since the mortgage lender formerly known as MKM Capital rebranded to MA Money.
Following a significant year of investment in 2023, the challenger lender has increased its brand profile, locked in $2.1 billion in loans under management in 2024, before smashing $3.3 billion in 2025.
Most recently, MA Money welcomed Craig Stuart (pictured, left) as its new head of commercial.
This was no run-of-the-mill hire. Stuart’s decades of expertise in the mortgage industry, coupled with extensive knowledge of commercial finance, was a clear statement of what MA Money has up its sleeve in the months and years ahead.
Brokers push for diversification
Though historically situated in the residential mortgage space, MA Money is looking at the $100 billion commercial lending industry with hungry eyes.
Discussing MA Money’s bold move into commercial finance, national sales manager Tim Lemon (pictured, right) made it clear that brokers are the ones forcing – or in more diplomatic terms, encouraging – the non-bank lender’s bold new direction.
When MA Money came to market under a fresh new banner in 2022, “we were doing really well in the residential space”, Lemon recalled.
But brokers were becoming increasingly demanding of what MA Money had to offer, particularly amid the ongoing diversification trend spreading across the industry.
Brokers who were already writing resi deals with MA Money wanted to bring commercial deals to the table too, but the infrastructure and team simply weren’t there to accommodate them.
But as broker feedback “got louder and louder”, and the pressure to get a concrete plan in place intensified, the team got to work.
Keeping it simple
Speaking to Lemon, it became clear that MA Money was not in the business of reinventing the wheel with its commercial lending strategy. With a rock-solid residential lending process in place, it was natural to try to replicate this tried and tested method as much as possible.
For Lemon, this streamlined approach across both residential and commercial is a unique selling point for MA Money in a competitive market where new entrants seem to be popping on a weekly basis.
MA Money’s commercial expansion “is very much a broker-led development”, said Lemon. “Everything we do involves looking at feedback and tweaking our processes and policies."
Simplicity is high up on the broker demands list – whether that’s at the accreditation, serviceability or application stages. Interestingly, brokers also encouraged MA Money to switch from Simpology to ApplyOnline, at a time when prolific lenders like AMP Banks were moving in the direct opposite direction.
Lemon explained that ApplyOnline is better suited to near-prime and alt-doc deals that are MA Money’s bread and butter.
Read more: AMP Bank officially launches new broker platform
MA Money has mirrored its alt-doc residential policy for commercial loans, including the risk profile. As Lemon said: “If you’ve got somebody with credit impairment in the resi space, it would mimic that of a commercial loan too… if they’re a near-prime customer in resi, they’re a near-prime customer in commercial.”
It amounts to a sizeable challenge that brokers have laid out for MA Money, but for better or worse, it’s a challenge very much rooted in wider industry trends.
Mortgage brokers are diversifying into commercial at record pace, with the number of mortgage brokers also writing commercial loans increasing by 24.21% in the April 2024 – September 2024 period, per the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia (MFAA)’s latest Industry Intelligence Service report.
While it is difficult to quantify, the running assumption is that brokers account for between 30% and 40% of commercial lending volume, although commercial lenders of all stripes expect this number to increase.
Challenger lenders like MA Money are playing a big role in this shift, but the banking giants are making bold moves into commercial lending too.
Westpac’s announcement this week that it intends to swap hundreds of teller roles for home and business lending roles was a clear statement of the banking major’s bullish intention for the commercial finance space.
CBA is also upping its commercial lending game, while NAB, Australia’s largest lender to Australia businesses, is digging its heels in.
With higher margins compared to residential mortgages for the taking, there’s a clear profit incentive at play, but how can a minnow like MA Money possibly compete against the banking giants?
Offering the right products is a start.
Stick or twist?
"When you talk about lenders like Westpac, CBA and ANZ, they really play in the big end of town,” said Lemon. MA Money, meanwhile, is targeting sub-$8 million for full-doc and sub-$6 million for low-doc loans.
The lender is also open to accrediting brokers who may not meet the volume requirements of the big banks.
Lemon believes MA Money’s commercial segment could soon account for 15% of monthly volume, with the potential to reach 25% over time. Expanding aggregator partnerships will be key to achieving these targets.
Having nabbed a spot on aggregation giant LMG’s panel in July, MA Money is now eyeing up more partnerships, including with the growing cohort of sub-aggregators entering the market.
In Lemon’s words, sub-aggregators “are a bit smaller and a little bit more open minded to direct accreditations”.
In such a competitive industry, there are no sure bets. Perhaps MA Money should stick to its knitting and do what it does best. But with a $100 billion commercial lending market for the taking, and increasingly demanding cohort of brokers, that doesn’t seem likely.
