$50m financial powerhouse built in mum and dad’s rumpus room

A young Brisbane richlister has built a $50m financial powerhouse from his parents’ house and now has plans to super-size the business in the next couple of years.

When Daniel Wessels arrived in Brisbane as a teenager from Zimbabwe in 2004, he threw himself into sport to make mates.

Wessels, who is a cousin of Australian and South African cricket great Kepler Wessels, excelled with the red ball, taking a career best of 5-6 as opening bowler for Brisbane Boys College against Brisbane Grammar.

Fast-forward almost 20 years and its financial wickets that the now 33-year-old Wessels is racking up as founder of Jacaranda Finance, one of the fastest-growing consumer finance firms in the country.

The firm started in 2014 with his brother from their parents’ house has an impressive loan book of $50m and annual revenue of $30m.

Wessels, who cut his financial teeth working for the consumer loan division of Cash Converters, remembers the first loan made by Jacaranda as he and his brother crowded into the family rumpus room.

“It was $1000 for whitegoods,” says Wessels from the company’s HQ in Coronation Dr where staff now deal with several thousand loan applications a day. “I remember someone would call up and ask for the loan manager and I would call out to my brother who would be upstairs making toast for something.”

Daniel Wessels is planning a big expansion of Jacaranda Finance

Wessels says technological innovation had been key to Jacaranda’s success, with the company employing 20 software developers. Speed and simplicity in making loan applications is the aim, with money often arriving in a customer’s account less than hour after they make their initial online application.

Jacaranda provides loans for life’s necessities rather than luxuries. The average customer is a 37-year-old blue-collar male earning about $70,000 a year.

“I used to think that we were a finance company that used technology,” he says. “But now I think of ourselves as a tech company that lends money.”

Wessels says lending money is the easiest business in the world, but getting that money back is the challenge. “The secret sauce is loan book management,” he says.

Jacaranda is planning a big expansion in the next couple of years with the loan book expected to reach $120m by 2023.

Wessels says Zimbabwe will always be close to his heart, with his company named after the trees that lined the street where he lived in the capital Harare.

“We had so many Jacaranda trees on both sides of the street that at certain times of the year there was a carpet of purple flowers on the ground,” he says, “I remember winding down the window of the car as mum drove down the street and hearing the popping sound they made.” One of the things that made him feel more at home in Brisbane was the proliferation of Jacaranda trees. “I can see one now down the street,” he says, pointing out his office window.

MAKING A SPLASH

It’s not often a Queensland business person has their face splashed over Times Square in New York. But such was the honor given to local legal eagle Russell Redsell, Youi’s executive general manager of legal, compliance and regulatory affairs, who has just picked up a big gong for his work with the insurer.

Redsell was named the 2021 winner of the ‘Governance Top 100’, a prestigious national award that recognises the work of lawyers working for ASX-listed companies, not-for-profit groups, government organisations, private firms.

Launched last year by 3YS Owls Governance Consultants, Redsell was chosen from this year’s finalists from executives working in agriculture, aviation, airports, banking and financial services. Redsell, who has been with Sunshine Coast-based Youi for three years, says winning the award was recognition that smaller organisations could still do amazing things around governance and in a nimble and meaningful way.

Russell Redsell on a Times Square electronic billboard in New York.

To acknowledge Redsell’s achievement his photo appeared on the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, New York earlier this month. Youi is one of the fastest growing insurance firms in the country and by all accounts a pretty nice place to work.

Youi’s swish campus next to the University of the Sunshine Coast at Sippy Downs features health facilities, a cafe, and outdoor barbecue areas and would not be out of place at a hipster start-up in Silicon Valley.

The South African-owned company, which began operating in Australia just over a decade ago, chose the Sunshine Coast for its HQ because it would be attractive to staff wanting a good work-life balance. The centre, which opened in 2017 and also includes Youi’s in-house legal, IT, marketing and human resources staff, employs about 1000 people.

ROOM AT THE INN

While NSW remains a Covid-19 hotspot there’s plenty of deals being madein the pub sector just over the border in anticipation of a summer wave of Queensland holidaymakers.

After 30 years the owners of Shaws Bay Hotel and Fenwick House manor in East Ballina have sold out in what the agents say was a “swift deal”.

Sydney group Parras Hospitality paid about $31m for the absolute waterfront property — just 25km from Byron Bay — and they have plans for an extensive refurbishment.

JLL Hotels director John Musca reckons the properties are both “deserved and primed” for a fully-integrated renovation.

Shaws Bay Hotel in Ballina.

The hotel is poised to capitalise on the area’s population and airport visitor arrival growth and while previously a previously a bar and boarding house, Fenwick House could end up a boutique hotel, co-working or commercial office concepts or function space,.

JLL has had a string of Byron Bay successes selling the Beach Hotel, Great Northern Hotel, Cheeky Monkeys and Holiday Village Backpackers.

With Shaws Bay Hotel and Fenwick House rounding off over $250m of transactions.

Other North Coast sales include in the past six months include the Lennox Hotel, Lennox and Illawong Hotel, Evans Head.

HAPPY HOUR

Men and women are not the same - at least in their drinking habits it seems. The controversial move to blend the genders at the Tattersalls Club in Queensland appears to be going well with a smattering of ladies spotted in the Healy Room on Wednesday enjoying a spot of lunch. But while the men in the room were sucking down glasses of wine and tankards of beer, the fairer sex were ordering martinis and fancy cocktails. City Beat spies tell us that now that women are admitted as full members of the club no doubt it will be offering up a filly, rather than a colt, soon as part of the Tatterrsalls racing syndicate. “That would indeed be the politically correct gender equity approach,” one spy says. A competition to name the latest additiion to the sydnicate is underway with some wags suggesting “In the Soup” in homage to the legendary pea and ham soup served in the dining room or “Ladies’ Man” in a salute to the victory by the sisterhood who overthrew the male-only ban a few years back.

WITH THE GRAIN

Good to see a bumper grain crop going through the Port of Brisbane. The port says bulk grain exports have surged so far this financial year with just under 450,000 tonnes exported from July through to October. That’s a welcome turnaround compared with the first quarter of 2021 when the port received imported bulk grain shipments following a prolonged drought period in our regional areas. Wheat has been the dominant commodity being exported, accounting for 73 per cent of the total tonnage, followed by sorghum, chickpeas and cotton seed. The Port of Brisbane’s bulk grain exports exceeded one million tonnes last financial year – the first time in almost a decade A bumper winter crop may further boost this year’s export tonnages once the harvest is completed in the coming months.