By contrast, the other mortgage broking firm to list this year, Mike Pero Mortgages, chalked up $13.1 million in sales for the year ended June 30, up 27.6% from the previous year. But NZMF is growing fast – revenue in the latest year tripled from $918,196 in the previous year. It has about 22 brokers working either in-house or as licencees (including the sole remaining office branded Loan Plan).

They place loans directly with the company’s finance company arm, which specialises in short-term lending secured by property, with its wholesale business which is funded by Australian Mortgage Securities (AMS which is part of the Australian Financial Investments Group which also owns retail home lender Wizard Home Loans), or with other third party lenders.

The company’s AMS-funded loan book grew 141% from about $16 million in the year ended March 2003 to nearly $40 million in the latest year.

Managing director John Callaghan says that loans written by NZMF during the latest year totalled $311 million with 55% or $174 million placed with mainstream banks and the other 44% or $137 million placed with non-bank lenders including New Zealand Finance itself, Liberty and Bluestone (the AMS loan book isn’t included in these figures).

ASB Bank ($55 million) and its subsidiary Sovereign ($31 million) gained the lion’s share of the banking business followed by Westpac ($32 million), National Bank ($27 million) and ANZ Bank ($21 million).

HSBC and Bank of New Zealand received $4 million each.

Callaghan says the loans placed with BNZ occurred before it instituted its policy of not dealing with mortgage brokers.