Plenti taps NAB for funding facility, pushes into car and green loans

Non-bank lender Plenti will use a new loan funding facility to help push into areas including commercial car and renewable energy loans.

Plenti CEO and founder Daniel Foggo: ‘This helps us put the foot on the accelerator for growth.’ Picture: Britta Campion

Non-bank lender Plenti will use a new loan funding facility to help accelerate growth and push into areas including commercial car and renewable energy loans.

The new $100m warehouse funding facility with National Australia Bank was announced in a statement to the ASX on Friday. It is targeted at personal and renewable energy lending.

The statement also noted fresh mezzanine finance from two undisclosed domestic investors and an increase in an existing secured car finance loan funding facility to $275m.

Plenti chief executive Daniel Foggo said the new NAB facility further diversified the company’s funding sources and positioned it for the next phase of growth.

“This helps us put the foot on the accelerator for growth,” he said, noting the facility provided a funding cost benefit of about 300 basis points for loans written and funded from it. “It gives us quite a lot of headroom to expand.”

Plenti focuses on personal loans, renewable energy finance and car loans, and also funds part of its loan book through peer-to-peer lending which connects investors with borrowers.

But the company has been navigating a disappointing ASX listing. Plenti’s shares tumbled on its ASX debut in September because investors were anxious about the impact of COVID-19 on loan losses. The stock closed almost 1 per cent higher at $1.04 on Friday, but it remains well down on a $1.66 listing price.

“Clearly we would like to see the share price heading on a different direction,” Mr Foggo said.

However, he highlighted that his immediate priority was delivering on the company’s strategy.

Helped by a rebound in consumer confidence, Mr Foggo said demand for personal loans was getting back towards pre COVID-19 levels, and he was pleased with loan repayment pauses continuing to decline.

Plenti — which has lent more than $1bn to customers since it was set up — has a loan book of about $459m.

As at November 15, 0.49 per cent of Plenti’s loan book was on a repayment deferral. Mr Foggo said this was not much higher than average hardship levels across the portfolio of between 0.3 and 0.4 per cent.