Ainslie van Onselen to head RAMS Home Loans

Westpac has tapped Ainslie van Onselen to lead the lender’s wholly-owned subsidiary RAMS Home Loans.

Ainslie van Onselen with her husband, The Australian’s Peter van Onselen.

Westpac Banking Group has tapped Ainslie van Onselen to lead the lender’s wholly-owned subsidiary RAMS Home Loans.

Ms Van Onselen, the current director of Westpac’s women’s markets, inclusion and diversity division, starts as executive director of RAMS in November and replaces Martine Jager, who moves to head of marketing for the nation’s second largest lender.

Ms van Onselen, a former chief of staff to Westpac boss Brian Hartzer, comes from Western Australia where she has been a deputy chair of the WA Insurance Commission and a member of the WA Legal Practice board.

She will report to Scott Tanner, the chief operating officer for Westpac’s consumer bank.

RAMS was sold to Westpac at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008 for $140 million after it became tangled in the US subprime mortgage crisis. The business came close to collapse in August 2007 after it was unable to refinance $6bn of short-term debt on the international market.

The debt crunch, a harbinger of the global financial crisis, smashed the share price of RAMS, which had listed only weeks before in an initial public offering.

“The past few years leading the RAMS business has been an incredible journey and I’ve made amazing memories,” Ms Jager said in an internal email announcing the decision.

There are currently more than 70 RAMS Home Loan offices around the country.

The company began life as a mortgage securitiser in 1991 and was launched as a retail brand in the Australian market in 1995. Since 2012, the lender has offered savings and transactions accounts.