Aussie transforms into one-stop property shop

Aussie, the iconic home loans brand, has expanded beyond mortgages, adding a host of new services, in a bid to become the primary property destination for Australians.

Lendi Group CEO David Hyman presenting at the businesses annual conference

Aussie, the iconic home loans brand is taking centre stage in a brand transformation that will see it become a one-stop-shop for finding, buying and owning property.

The brand, which is owned by Australia’s largest retail mortgage broker Lendi Group, has expanded on its core mortgage business to incorporate new services such as buyer’s agent services, conveyancing, insurance, live equity tracking, a data-led search platform of pre-market homes listings and agent services for buying and selling property.

The strategy aims to position Aussie as the primary destination for Australians to find, buy and own their property, according to Lendi Group chief executive officer David Hyman.

“We’ve always held a view that the way to bring together the property ecosystem is to have a fully integrated property and mortgages experience,” said Mr Hyman. “It’s not just a moment in time where customers get the loan. It’s really all about that whole find, buy, own, experience, which, for some people might happen over seven to 10 years.”

The expanded service aims to streamline the home-buying process and position Aussie at every touchpoint in a customers’ property journey. The move sees Lendi Group, which owns both the Aussie and Lendi brands following a merger of the two in 2021, give the spotlight to the Aussie brand as the primary broking brand while the Lendi brand takes a back seat. The move will see the Lendi brand focused on niche cohorts, digital experiences and trials, such as the use of AI and agentic experiences.

“The Aussie brand was never not front and center, but, as we brought the two businesses together, we needed to maintain the status quo for both brands while we brought the Aussie and Lendi brokers and customers together on one platform.

“This process gave us the opportunity to ask ourselves about the role of both of these brands in our broader ecosystem and consider how we position these for our advantage under, not so much a house of brands approach, but a multi-brand strategy.”

Mr Hyman said the process revealed the strength of Aussie’s brand awareness, which is over 60 per cent, and the growth of brand consideration, which has risen from 20 per cent to almost 30 per cent.

“When we look at, what I call, headline transaction types we’re able to acquire customers at a cheaper price, more of them convert and we gain more engagement and that all comes down to that brand awareness and consideration,” he said.

Aussie launched the new positioning at its annual Thrive conference in Sydney last week and aims to mobilise its network of brokers to help build awareness. The brand will also roll out “above-the-line messaging” over the next few months with activity across TV and out-of-home networks.

The marketing activity will center around the brand’s new pillars of Find, Buy, Own and will focus on product and proposition-led storytelling to boost consideration of the brand and the platform.

“We’ve expanded our above-the-line spend in Aussie reasonably materially this calendar year and we plan on continuing doing that. We’ve got great awareness, we’ve got great consideration around the Aussie brand. But the story we need to tell now is that you can now come to Aussie to find, buy and own your property.”

“From a positioning perspective over the next 12 months we need to position Aussie as the undisputed destination for Australians to find, buy and own their property.”

“We have ambitions to continue growing our business with double digit year-on-year and we’ve had a really strong start to the year to date. We will do over $30billion this year. We’ve got over $100 billion on our book. We’ve got over 5 million customers on the platform, and that’s growing by 800,000 a year, so we are on track to be a million at some stage.”

The new proposition is already driving new customers to the business, said Mr Hyman, with seven in 10 customers using the buyer’s agent service and then using Aussie for their mortgage as well.

“That tells us is that as we bring these new propositions to market, we’re kind of creating new new pathways to market for our brands, our channels and our brokers. The priority for us in the immediate short term is bringing the find, buy and own positioning to life and rolling that out, not just through our broker, but also, to consumers as well.”