🌍 Global
Fintech Company
Athena Home Loans
The lending services that big banks provide often come with many strings attached. The surcharges apart from the loan amount carve another hole in your pocket. Startups like Athena have provided alternative avenues of lending services. Athena is a Fintech Australian company that is making the process of getting loans and mortgages easy. Athena came into being in 2017, cofounded by Nathan Walsh and Michael Starkey, both former Australian National Bank executives launched Athena Home Loans as a web portal where applying for loans is simpler and more transparent.
Their entire lending operation rests in three specialized areas: technologically enabling the application process to be completed on the web, no overhead costs like traditional banks, and an efficient customer support network. Here are some broad details about the company and its prospects, recent developments, and growth expectations.
Athena has got the right intent in their services. Their company motto is not to give loans but to let people get rid of loans. In a way, they make the process of getting a home loan easy. In a situation where banks’s loans do not provide any good interest rates and if they are marred with additional surcharges apart from the principal and interest amount, Athena will be the better choice. As the Fintech sector evolves Athena will remain in vogue.
Image Source: https://www.athena.com.au/
Nathen Walsh is one of the co-founders of Athena.
Mira Hohn is the Chief Product Officer at Athena.
Michael Starkey is another co-founder of Athena.
Yamen Al Afifi is the CTO (Chief Technology Officer ) at Athena.
Straight Up loan has the lowest interest rates. You can choose to drop your interest rate through the Athena Accelerates plan which reduces the interest rate as per LVR (loan-to-value ratio). There are many tiers available at many levels once you reach the lowest LVR, your interest rate will automatically drop. In Straight Up you do not need to pay any additional costs, valuation fees, exit or monthly fees. It has an automatic rate match as a feature, if the interest rates change, you can get a better deal. You can use the redraw feature from the offset account but you need to tell that to the customer service. You can check interest rates on different LVR tiers here.
Power Up is similar to straight-up but has multiple offset options. In the 100% offset option, you can credit your salary into your loan account and pay lower interest rates. There is no additional surcharge levied in this process. In Split and Flexi Power Up loans, you can split your loan payments into multiple parts, and choose whether to keep an offset or not. There are additional options for choosing fixed or variable interest rates for all the parts. It gives you the freedom to pay the loans according to your wants.
Another Power Up loan that Athena offers is Multiple Offset loans where the concept of cash stash is calculated. Each cash stash or amount of money has its offsets, hence varying interest rates. This cash stash strategy helps in compartmentalizing your money for different avenues of spending.
Athena provides interest-only loans (IO loans). In IO loans you need to only pay back the interest amount of your loans for a shorter period and once you have paid that you can then revert to paying the principal and interest amount together. When to start paying the full amount? There will be a discussed timeline between Athena’s loans team. and the customer, a correct date to redraw or mark an offset can be done to infuse principal and interest payments together.
Fixed as the name suggests means fixed interest rates that you need to pay for the loan. Interest rates are subject to change now and then, in a fixed interest rate system your interest amount remains the same, The Fixed Interest rate starts from 6.4%.
Athena Home Loans managed to score their first seed money of $1 Million. Prominent investors include Square Peg Capital, Reinventure, and SecondQuarter Ventures. The investors were impressed by its technological precision in granting loans.
Athena’s vision gets adequately recognized by a host of top-tier investors, and that includes, Square Peg Capital, Reinventure, SecondQuarter Ventures, and AirTree Ventures. The company managed to pull in $20 Million and they used it to expand their team and improve their digital platform.
Athena got $26.4 million in their Series B session. Hostplus a leading SuperAnnuation fund invested in Athena in collaboration with Square Peg Capital. This led to reaching and expanding the current base of customers. This is when Athena had its breakthrough.
Athena’s rise to power has not gone unnoticed by big Funds. Venture capital funds include Australian Super and Salesforce Ventures, along with Square Peg Capital and AirTree provided $70 million in funds. The company managed to get the highest Australian-led venture capital round. This strengthened Athena’s expansion to more homes.
In Series D Funding Athena shattered the records, by getting a whopping $90 million with companies like Morgan Stanley and Fidelity International as investors. It further made the company improve its technological domain.
