Brighten Home Loans appoints industry veteran as Head of Distribution

Publication Date: Wednesday, 8 April 2020
This article originally appeared in Adviser Voice

Rapidly growing Australian non-bank lender Brighten Home Loans (‘Brighten’) has appointed industry veteran Natalie Sheehan as Head of Distribution.

Sheehan has 30 years’ lending industry experience, most recently as General Manager at specialist finance lender Resicom Financial, where she was responsible for managing and mentoring the firm’s national team of business development managers and credit analysts and growing the introducer network.

The appointment follows a period of rapid growth for Brighten, which has made substantial progress since it commenced operations in 2017 with an initial product offering including home loans to non-residents of Australia and Australian residents with income from abroad.

Since then it has invested extensively in building a platform for growth and has expanded its presence in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. In January 2020 Brighten secured a $250 million tranche of funding through a warehouse facility with Goldman Sachs, a year after having secured its first $500 million warehouse facility from another global financial institution.

Scott Kelly, Managing Director, said the Brighten management team was delighted to welcome Natalie. “ As we rapidly scale up our business in response to strong growth, Natalie’s knowledge, experience, and networks will enable her to make a major contribution. “In particular, Natalie will spearhead our expansion into the Prime and Near Prime loan segments, drawing on our ability to provide brokers with a streamlined product offering, a simple and competitive pricing structure, and a superior service proposition assisted through our enhanced technology platform.”

Sheehan is also a MFAA and FBAA accredited mentor under the More than Mentoring program which provides online study modules, hands on training sessions and workshops for new to industry brokers. She will oversee the growth of Brighten’s broker and aggregator networks.

“At Brighten we value long term partnership and we strive to become a reliable and credible partner to our brokers. We believe we can not only deliver great lending products for their clients but also help them grow other parts of their business. This is a significant point of difference for us, and I believe Natalie’s extensive mentoring experiences will be of great value as we continue to actively invest into the expansion of our broker and aggregator networks. We also expect to make an announcement regarding aggregator partnerships in coming weeks that will further expand our distribution networks,” Mr Kelly said.

Sheehan’s other previous roles have included Head of Distribution and then Chief Operating Officer at Better Choice Home Loans and Senior Business Development Manager Victoria with Homeloans Limited/Resimac. She also held senior business development positions with Resicom and Pepper Homeloans.

Sheehan is currently completing a Master of Business Administration degree from Monash University. She holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Insolvency Practice from the Queensland University of Technology, a Diploma of Finance and Mortgage Broking Management from AAMC Training.