MoneyPlace cedes control to bank
Auswide Bank will emerge with a controlling interest "of at least 51 per cent" in MoneyPlace Australia under a capital raising by the specialist lender now underway.The Queensland bank's stake may end up as high as 75 per cent, "dependent on the final take up of other MoneyPlace shareholders" in a capital raising initiative now underway, the bank said in a statement to the ASX.Auswide first took a 19.3 per cent stake in MoneyPlace in late 2015.Stuart Stoyan, CEO of MoneyPlace, said he anticipated Auswide would end up with a stake closer to 51 per cent, once existing shareholders exercised options to also chip in.Martin Barrett, managing director of Auswide, said the bank's loan funding for MoneyPlace had "now exceeded A$8 million over the last seven months and momentum continues to build."Barrett said loan quality had "also been performing above expectations."Stoyan put the lender's overall loan book at around $10 million.He projected the potential for all marketplace and peer to peer lenders as being as high as $10 billion or even $20 billion out of a $100 billion consumer loan market.Money Place, Stoyan said, was earning a yield on its loans of around 12 per cent, with around half of new business flows debt consolidation.While presenting itself as a "peer to peer" lender, MoneyPlace is still only taking funding from wholesale investors.