RIEDEL There has been a lot of activity in the personal-lending space. This is the latest market where nonbanks have sought to take market share from banks. This is why we purchased MoneyPlace: it is our platform to do exactly this. It is similar to what we did in the residential-lending space 21 years ago. We don’t see much from new entrants outside personal lending.

BYRNE Pepper Group (Pepper)’s asset-finance book has been growing and developing over the last few years. We had large aspirations for 2018 which we are now well ahead of. This is a competitive space but it is an asset class we like.

We are looking to bring our first public transaction off this platform at some point in 2019, which will provide some good diversification for Pepper’s investors. We are getting to the level of scale in this business where we may bring multiple transactions each year.

There are additional opportunities being created with banks moving away from parts of the asset class as well. It will be interesting to see what happens when the changes from the royal commission come in.

AUSTIN There are new entrants being funded by a regional bank but, like the fintech restricted licenses, they are all really at proof-of-concept stage. They tend to believe they have a great idea and we have seen some trumpeting in the press that they have an authorised deposit-taking institution licence. But it is restricted to A$2 million (US$1.5 million) of deposits. These entities are extremely small and are getting an outsized profile from media coverage.

PLOUGHMAN We think there will be an opportunity, in a couple of years, to pick them up because they are probably not going to get to scale. This is a volume game. If you cannot write volume the business model does not work. That’s not to say you need major-bank-type volume, but you do need to be substantially bigger than the challengers currently are.

In the financial crisis a number of small lenders had a few hundred million dollars of mortgages and then couldn’t withstand the issues that arose at that time.

Some of the new fintechs are just distribution plays. They look like financial institutions, but they are not lenders. I struggle to see how the model for those ‘neobanks’ with restricted licenses will work.

I do agree there is the potential for them to pick up some market share on the personal-lending side. They will still need a reasonable amount of customers, though – you can’t make it work with A$50 million of loans.

MARSDEN We made an announcement around an investment in a fintech company in August. We see the opportunity as more of a distribution play or around technology and automation of the servicing platform.

BARRY As part of the Blackstone Group, we have made a similar investment in Tic:Toc, which is a direct-to-customer loan-approval and distribution-technology platform. We think nonbanks will continue to experiment in the space.

RIEDEL If there is a threat I don’t think it is coming from start-up companies. Ultimately we are in the business of attracting and engaging customers, so the challenger is likely to be a global powerhouse that has built its business around customer experience and acquisition.

PLOUGHMAN If a giant company like Google, Alibaba or Amazon were to go into the mortgage business it could seriously disrupt. They have the money to put behind it.