VersaBank enters home financing market

VersaBank appoints veteran real estate exec to lead its new Instant Mortgage lending vertical

LONDON-BASED FINTECH FIRM VersaBank has announced the appointment of veteran real estate finance executive, Jim Gardiner, to the position of product champion, Instant Mortgage, to lead the bank’s new Instant Mortgage lending business.

Gardiner brings more than 30 years of real estate lending experience to VersaBank’s new Instant Mortgage business.

Based on the same underlying technology and value proposition as VersaBank’s highly successful point-of-sale software solution for big-ticket consumer purchases, Instant Mortgage is a high-volume application for real estate developers and brokers that enables the VersaBank to meaningfully enter the $200-billion home financing market, creating its third lending vertical.

The Instant Mortgage software app will provide home and condominium builders and sales brokerage firms on-the-spot financing approvals, with a specific focus on newcomer home and condo buyers with significant wealth but no credit history in Canada. Instant Mortgage will provide clients with immediate access to capital to fund loans to approved home and condo buyers, facilitating and expediting the sales process.

Similar to the bank’s point-of-sale loan and lease model, loans to VersaBank’s builder and sales brokerage partner transactions are structured with cash holdbacks that virtually eliminate the risk to VersaBank of non-performing loans.

“Instant Mortgage represents an extraordinary new growth opportunity to apply VersaBank’s proven, proprietary point-of-sale software solution to an entirely new and very large business vertical in pursuit of continued outsized long-term growth,” says David Taylor, VersaBank president and CEO. “Our point-of-sale software solution already provides more than 20 financial partners with nearly $1 billion of loans and leases and we look to replicate and surpass that success with our Instant Mortgage solution. Importantly, the launch of Instant Mortgage will further capitalize on the significant operating leverage within our business model as a fully digital bank.”

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“VersaBank’s Instant Mortgage offering is by far the most innovative residential mortgage finance solution I have seen in my career,” states Gardiner. “It is truly revolutionary. Nothing else like it exists today. VersaBank has once again used its proprietary banking technology to address a significant unmet need in the marketplace – rapid, direct access to loan capital, in a pre-construction sales environment. It is a game-changer for the real estate industry.”

Prior to joining VersaBank, Gardiner was regional vice president – commercial services for Southwestern Ontario at Meridian Credit Union. Before joining Meridian, he was commercial lending director at Central 1 Credit Union, regional manager – real estate at Pacific & Western Bank and held multiple positions at TD Bank Group.

 “Jim is the right person to lead this new business and I have the utmost confidence in his ability to champion its success,” adds Taylor. “His specific expertise and extensive industry relationships will be invaluable to maximizing the potential of this opportunity, as the bank continues to deploy in excess of $2 billion across all of our lending verticals in pursuit of superior net interest margins while mitigating risk.”