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Non-bank lender Liberty Financial Group (Liberty) has acquired a 50 per cent interest in Moula Money Pty Ltd (Moula) – the unsecured lender that offers working capital requirements.
The acquisition, which was completed on 31 December for $20.9 million, includes Moula’s subsidiaries (Moula Funding, Moula Warehouse Trust No.1).
Liberty had previously held a 20 per cent stake in Moula, after having first taken a stake in the non-bank in 2015.
When releasing its half-year results for the six months ending 31 December 2025, Liberty revealed it had undertaken the move to strengthen its position in the higher-yielding SME lending segments through the acquisition of “an established, brand and specialised lender”.
As a result, Liberty now controls Moula.
It is expected that the lender will move to offer a parcel of cash flow finance for small businesses, with secured offerings from Liberty Financial in the near future. This could potentially open the lender up to a new funnel of potential customers.
The group outlined that there are “obvious synergies” between the two lending groups and that the group believed that it was “better Moula is with us than independent” and could become a “really significant” part of the Liberty business.
Speaking to Broker Daily on Monday (23 February), Liberty Financial’s CEO, James Boyle, said: “The acquisition of the controlling stake is really about working closely with the Moula business and teams to get an even broader range of products out to our brokers for their customers.
“We think it’s really complementary of our existing offer, particularly in terms of secured commercial lending for small businesses. And we think there’s a really exciting synergy to explore their long history of delivering cash flow solutions to businesses, complemented by our long history of providing secured, set-and-forget amortising loans for small businesses.
“So, we’ll be working to review the Moula product offer, to broaden it, and to work in collaboration together to provide better solutions for SME borrowers.”
Boyle suggested that brokers could expect to see the broadened offer before the end of the calendar year.
Business lending heats up
The CEO said that while business lending had been “a really vibrant” part of the Liberty group offering for the past five years, both SME and SMSF have gone from “strength to strength” recently.
Indeed, Liberty Financial has been growing its business originations, with secured business originations for the half coming in over $1 billion – stronger than either of the last two halves.
The CEO suggested that business lending would continue to grow as it marries “best-in-class cash flow lending with secured lending” and told Broker Daily: “It’s another great way that non-banks can offer products that banks are not as good at providing, so we think it plays really well to our DNA, to our heritage. And we’re definitely excited about the growth that can come from it.”
The business lending growth comes as Liberty posts “strong” financial results. When releasing its half-year results, Liberty outlined that it had set a new group record with the value of loans written in the half, rising to $3.1 billion (up from $2.8 billion in 1H25).
This was achieved with higher residential originations (rising from $1.7 billion in 1H25 to $1.85 billion in 1H26).
However, its overall residential portfolio continued to shrink, caused by continuing discharges in a highly competitive market. Its residential loan book fell to $7.63 billion, as its annualised discharge rate rose to 40 per cent.
The CEO and CFO flagged that this came as the banks are “competing fiercely” and suggested the banks were “definitely lowering standards in order to try and drive better market share”.
Boyle said: “What that means is there are pretty good alternatives for customers to go to banks pretty quickly after they’ve joined us. And so that’s the rear guard that we continue to try to manage as best we can.”
Overall, Liberty reported a 12 per cent increase in underlying net profit after tax adjusted (NPATA) to $82.3 million for the six months ending 31 December 2025 compared to the six months ending 30 June 2025.
Boyle said: “We’ve done this by maintaining our strong operating disciplines as reflected in our stable portfolio, industry-leading NIM and cost-to-income ratios in a highly competitive and challenging market.
“Our continued focus on service delivery and differentiated customer solutions means there are real alternatives for customers needing finance which are unable to be offered by traditional lenders.
“We recognise that recent interest rate increases and economic challenges remain, and we will continue to focus on providing our customers with differentiated products and good support as needed.”
[Related: Non-banks outperform majors for commercial loan turnaround times]