Wizard on Willis

As Australia-based Wizard Home Loans opened its 12th New Zealand office in Wellington on Friday, John Grant (pictured), head of the New Zealand business claims the organisation is now writing eight to 10 home loan applications worth $2 million a day, about double what it was doing three months ago.

"We would like to see that double again over the next three months," Grant said at the opening in downtown Willis St amid jokes as to whether the new office will be known as "Wizard on Willis" or "the Wizard of Wellington."

The new Wellington franchisees of the non-bank home loans provider are Alen Juran and Andrew Lawrence.

Melbourne-based chief executive Angelo Malizis was in Wellington for the opening and told the gathering the 150-branch Australasian business is now consistently writing more than A$600 million in mortgages each month. That’s up from about A$400 million a month in the latter months of last year.

He signalled Wizard will be pushing for lending institutions to publish an "average annual rate" incorporating all fees and charges involved with every home loan offer. The Queensland Parliament has just passed legislation requiring institutions to use such a rate and Wizard will be lobbying the New Zealand government to adopt the same standard, Malizis said.

"Everybody here has probably experienced frustration at some time when they’ve gone home loan shopping," he said, referring to the great difficulty in comparing different institutions’ offers at present. "It’s all about truth and transparency in lending," he said.

Wizard sources its funding from Australian Mortgage Securities (AMS).

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