Andronicos takes the reins at Firstfolio

Two years after its last chief executive left the company, mortgage specialist Firstfolio has appointed a new CEO. The head of the company's eChoice division, Peter Andronicos, has been given the top job.

Andronicos has been general manager of eChoice, the aggregation and broking side of the business, since 2009.

Firstfolio got into trouble after going on an acquisition spree in 2010 and 2011 before finding it could not service its debt when the mortgage market turned down.

Andronicos said there were no acquisitions on the horizon but he was keen to pursue a range of strategic partnerships to broaden the business.

Since 2012, most of the news about Firstfolio has been about its stop-start efforts to recapitalise. That issue was largely resolved in June, when it finalised a new senior debt facility.

Over those two years Andronicos and the other members of the senior team have worked to integrate the many acquisitions and turn them into a viable business.

They have reorganised the business into two brands: Folio, which is a mortgage manufacturing, funding distribution and management business; and eChoice, which is an aggregation and broking business.

Folio, which was formed from the Calibre, National Finance Club and other acquisitions, has a securitisation platform and wholesale funding arrangements with ING Direct, Advantedge, Adelaide Bank and others.

It creates product that it sells to its own customers and it offers a white label service to brokers and affiliates.

eChoice, which was formed from Apple Loans, First Chartered Capital and other acquisition, provides brokers and aggregators with fully qualified leads. It has its own brokers and also services third parties.

At June 30 the company had A$18.2 billion of loans under management.

Andronicos said Firstfolio's competitive advantage was its very modern digital platform that delivered data that could generate leads and sales, as well as guide product and service development.

One of Firstfolio's established partnerships is with the Domain real estate website, where it identifies people looking for a home loan and turns them into leads for its own brokers or for third party brokers.

Andronicos said the new partnerships he was pursuing were similar to the work with Domain but with broader applications.