About Us Press releases Harmoney at the ASX small and mid-cap conference

Harmoney at the ASX small and mid-cap conference

Sydney, Australia, 19 March 2021

Harmoney CEO, David Stevens, took the virtual stage Wednesday (March 17) to present to an enthusiastic investor audience at the 2021 ASX Small and Mid-Cap Conference, eager to learn more about Harmoney. Dave took the audience through a brief overview of Harmoney and its recent performance before rounding things off with a strategic outlook and Q&A. This year’s conference was hosted live in an entirely virtual format with investors hearing from 24 emerging ASX-listed small and mid-cap companies.

In a post-presentation interview with Proactive’s Andrew Scott, and Dave and Andrew explored Harmoney’s key market differentiators, benefits to customers, and the company’s ambitions - it’s well worth a look. A video of the full 15 min presentation is available.

An introduction to Harmoney

To open, Dave set the tone with a slide titled: “Largest direct personal lender across Australia and New Zealand. Originations of NZ$1.9+ billion”, which provided a view of the company in numbers, from customer satisfaction and demographics, key business metrics such as revenue, and an overview of the Harmoney team. Dave followed, showing the strong momentum the company has built in the last few months, since listing on both the ASX and NZX in November 2020. The latest release of Harmoney’s proprietary credit scoring and pricing engine Libra™* was featured, and noted as the first time Libra™ had been trained specifically using customer data from Harmoney’s Australian customers. The scale of Australian customer data utilised - over 53,000 Harmoney loan applications totalling over NZ$3 billion in lending enquiry - has had an immediate impact, with early results showing a doubling of lending volume from new Australian customers. (It’s important to note that credit quality policy and settings remain unchanged, to ensure the continued quality of Harmoney’s investor-grade loan book.)

The company introduction was rounded off showing Harmoney’s strong origination growth since launching in 2014 (CAGR of 79%, net interest margin of ~11%), and an overview of Harmoney’s 3Rs strategy, showing the view of short, medium and long term lending horizons of Harmoney customers.

Momentum in 1H21 results

The 1H21 results section part of the presentation was nicely summarised in a highlights slide, showing a return of origination growth (47% quarter on quarter) and revenue (NZ$42M), while achieving historic lows in arrears (90+ day arrears 0.06%). More detail was provided in the following slides, with the section finishing on Harmoney’s diversified funding (headroom of NZ$290M+ undrawn), including details of the newly established second New Zealand warehouse, funded up to a NZ$200M limit by M&G Investments. M&G is a global asset management company based in the UK.

Strategy and outlook: path to Australian originations of AU$1B p.a.

Dave’s presentation laid out both foundations and ambitions for growing Harmoney’s market share in Australia to AU$1B in loan origination per annum in the long term, summed up in the phrase “Frictionless finance”. It will come as no surprise that increasing numbers of people are doing more than researching a personal loan online - people applying online has grown 113% since 2015** - a consumer behavioural trend that has helped Harmoney reach over NZ$7.4B in customer enquiry since launching. Coupled with Australia’s personal lending market of AU$150B, Australia provides a considerable addressable market for Harmoney, whose dominance in New Zealand already sees it as the largest direct-to-consumer personal lender in the region. Achieving conversion metrics in Australia that are on par with New Zealand will see the company achieve the goal of AU$1B in annual loan origination in Australia. The success of Libra™ 1.7 is a very promising start.

Before moving on to Q&A, Dave wrapped up his presentation with a one-pager “Why is Harmoney’s model successful?” highlighting the company’s strong technology focus, compelling business fundamentals, and team experience.

Reflecting the broad audience of investors in attendance, Dave responded to a wide range of questions; from Harmoney’s collaboration*** with Google, to structured warehouse financing, to the most popular loan purpose, and much more between. Much of this information - and a lot more - is available in Harmoney’s IPO prospectus (available to download).

*Libra™ forms part of Harmoney’s proprietary technology platform, Stellare™. Libra&trade is the credit decisioning and pricing engine in Stellare™ and is a key enabler of Harmoney’s automated credit decisioning technology.
**Kantar shopper pulse october 2020. Google consumer barometer research 2015.
***https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-aunz/marketing-strategies/data-and-measurement/how-harmoney-found-smarter-way-surface-lifetime-value-machine-learning/

For queries please contact:

Investors

David Stevens
CEO & Managing Director
investors@harmoney.co.nz

Media

Courtney Howe
+61 404 310 364
courtney@domestiqueconsulting.com.au

About Harmoney

Harmoney is an online direct personal lender that operates across Australia and New Zealand providing customers with unsecured personal loans that are easy to access, competitively priced (using risk-adjusted interest rates) and accessed 100% online.

Harmoney’s purpose is to help people achieve their goals through financial products that are fair, friendly, and simple to use.

Harmoney’s proprietary digital lending platform, Stellare™, facilitates its personalised loan product with applications processed and loans typically funded within 24 hours of acceptance by the customer. Stellare™ applies a customer’s individual circumstance to its data-driven, machine learning credit scorecard to deliver automated credit decisioning and accurate risk-based pricing.

Business fundamentals

  • Harmoney provides unsecured personal loans of up to $70,000 for three or five year periods to customers across New Zealand and Australia
  • Its direct-to-consumer and automated loan approval system is underpinned by Harmoney’s scalable Stellare™ proprietary technology platform
  • A significant percentage of Harmoney’s originations are “3R” (repeat) customers, with losses on repeat loans approximately 40% lower than first time loans
  • Harmoney is comprised of a team of 69 full-time employees across Australia and New Zealand, over half of whom comprise engineering, data science and product professionals
  • Harmoney is funded by a number of sources including two “Big-4” bank warehouse programs across Australia and New Zealand and a facility from MG Investments