Ann: Annual Report to shareholders, page-72

Wisr is an online platform and the customer enters all the information themselves as well as uploading documents. A representative then contacts the customer and clarifies any questions and updates on documents required. I applied for a personal loan with them direct and spoke to someone 3 times between first submission and drawdown. Total time on the phone would not have been more than 15 mins.

Even though a broker gets paid on successful loan applications only, Wisr staff/lending platform are still decisioning the application. It’s not like Wisr’s cost is $0 for a broker application outside of payment of broker commission. With their digital offering the value the broker brings is the introduction of the business and the collating of documentation, but assuming a credit analyst is on a flat hourly rate I would imagine it is more cost efficient to pay them a wage versus pay the broker their fee for “putting the deal together”.

Even if Wisr is passing on the broker commission cost to the borrower, that cost is still going to be considered by the customer. E.g. the rate somewhere else might be higher but the overall cost to the customer is lower if they aren’t having to pay a $$ amount as part of the approval process/have this financed into the loan.

The point I absolutely agree with is that at their stage of growth, they do need to also keep spending on building the relationships with people that can introduce them business. Let’s see what they do in this space in the next 6-12 months given this option will always be there, the olympics have come and gone now for another 3 years.