Bolton looks to squirrel away investors' money

Mortgage broking firm Squirrel is offering its client base and other supporters a slice of the company.

Thursday, February 11th 2016, 2:08PM

It has started taking expressions of interest for an equity crowdfunding round to raise $2 million via the Snowball Effect platform.

That would represent a maximum 8 per cent of the business.

The Squirrel group operates a mortgage broking arm and the recently-launched peer-to-peer lending platform Squirrel Money.

Founder John Bolton said the group had an audited before-tax profit of $543,000 in the 2015 financial year. The mortgages business contributed $866,000, which was offset by the start-up costs of Squirrel Money.

For the 2016 year, Squirrel forecasts a group pre-tax profit of about $600,000 with the mortgage side contributing $1.8 million, offset by a $1 million loss for Squirrel Money.

Bolton said the money raised would be used to fund IT development and further expansion of the group’s activities over the next few years. “We have been able to divert our profit into building Squirrel Money and other growth initiatives but as we get bigger that’s not a good way to run a business. We are starting to think we are capital-constrained now and are not investing as fast as we should be given the trajectory we are on.”

He said the Snowball campaign would not be publicly available on the platform's website but was being advertised to Squirrel’s client base of about 8000 people. “It’s a fantastic way of giving existing clients and people who know the business the opportunity to invest. People who have created our success.”

Bolton said an investment prospectus should be available in a couple of weeks, after which investors could start offering money.

Squirrel plans a sharemarket listing for 2017 or 2018.

“The long-term vision is to create the largest retail financial services business in the country,” Bolton said.

Tags: John Bolton Squirrel