Squirrel applies to become QFE

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Squirrel Mortgages is applying for QFE status, and wants to start offering KiwiSaver and peer-to-peer lending.

Thursday, November 27th 2014, 6:00AM 5 Comments

by Susan Edmunds

Founder John Bolton said he had applied for a peer-to-peer lending license from the FMA and hoped to have Squirrel Money operating by February. “It’s a three-month process.”

He said he had always wanted Squirrel to be a full-service financial service business but had not been able to do everything at first. “I pulled back and focused on mortgages, focused on first-home buyers. Now we’ve reached the maturity in the business and actually were aren’t like a normal mortgage broker, we’re a branded business with a big client base. There are things we’re not doing that we should be doing.”

Bolton said he was in the process of applying to become a QFE. “Once we are QFE-d we won’t need to worry about the advice piece and can run with the existing team.”

He said he hoped to be able to work with an existing, good provider offering KiwiSaver.

The changes were labour- and time-intensive, he said. “You’ve got to have huge amounts of infrastructure. We’re building our IT platform, it’s not a small task. I’m lucky I have some very good IT resource I could prioritise and refocus.”

Squirrel will also have to appoint a board of directors and deal with more compliance and audit requirements, he said.  “It’s quite big, quite expensive. The FMA talks about allowing small businesses and start-ups to get into business and while it’s not prohibitively expensive, it’s not something you can do half-arsed.”

Bolton said Squirrel Money could help with things such as house renovations and could offer bigger loans than those offered by Harmoney, the only service licensed so far. It offers up to $35,000.

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