Your Aggregator Just Added Private Lending: The Business-Purpose Trap to Read Before You Write One

1. What was actually announced

Within two days, the two largest independent aggregator white-label programs in the country each stepped further away from vanilla residential lending.

On 17 August 2026, Finsure launched Finsure Loans Ascend, funded by Brisbane-based Australian Secure Capital Fund. The product covers bridging finance, first and second mortgages, and short-term business loans. Finsure’s head of white label, John Lafferrarie, framed the demand simply: “Private lending solutions give our brokers the opportunity to support a broader customer base, particularly business customers who may not meet traditional borrowing requirements.”

Finsure also disclosed a striking internal number: a 68 per cent increase in the share of non-conforming loans written through Finsure Loans since January. Lafferrarie attributed it to lender policy: “While it is hard to narrow it down to one reason, I believe changes in prime lending policies have resulted in more borrowers looking for alternative lending options.”

On 18 August, AFG rolled out AFG Home Loans Bridge, a white-label bridging product developed with fintech lender Bridgit and released nationally across a broker network of more than 4,000 members. AFG’s general manager of white label, Hayden Cush, described the use case: “Buying and selling property does not always happen in a neat sequence. Many customers find the right next home before their existing property has sold, and they need a finance solution that gives them speed, confidence and flexibility.”

The context supports it. Upgraders were 44 per cent of AFG lodgements in the June quarter, and AFG reported $29.5 billion in broker-lodged home loans in the March quarter, its strongest March quarter on record.

2. These are two different announcements, not one trend

It is tempting to file both under “aggregators move into alternative lending”. That reading loses the distinction that matters.

AFG’s move is a bridging launch, and it is the last of the major aggregator programs to make it. Bridgit’s sequence through the channel runs Connective in October 2024, Finsure in March 2025, Aussie in May 2025, the Specialist Finance Group panel in April 2026, and now AFG’s white label in August 2026. Bridging is no longer a specialist referral; it is a mainstream white-label line.

Finsure’s move is not a bridging expansion at all — it has had Bridgit-funded white-label bridging since March 2025. Ascend is a private lending expansion, and the genuinely new elements are the named private funder, the extension into second mortgages, and the appearance of short-term business lending alongside the residential range.

That distinction changes the risk profile. A closed bridging loan against a property already under contract is a timing product with a defined exit. A second mortgage or a short-term business loan for a borrower who does not meet mainstream policy is something else entirely.

3. What the announcements deliberately left out

This matters for how you talk to clients this week. Neither Australian Broker nor Broker Daily published product terms for either launch. There are no disclosed interest rates, fees, minimum or maximum loan sizes, maximum LVRs, loan terms or turnaround times for AFG Home Loans Bridge or Finsure Loans Ascend.

Do not fill that gap with the funder’s general product information. Bridgit’s own published parameters as at February 2026 — up to 85 per cent LVR on closed bridging scenarios, a maximum of $8 million at that LVR and $10 million overall, 12 or 24 month terms, and setup fees of 0.60 per cent or 0.95 per cent depending on term — describe Bridgit’s direct offering. They are not the announced terms of AFG’s white label, and the earlier Finsure Loans Bridge product carried materially different parameters again: $300,000 to $8 million, LVR of 80 per cent or less, terms up to 12 months.

Similarly, ASCF publishes maximum LVRs of 80 per cent on two of its funds and 70 per cent on a third, terms of one to 24 months, and business loan settlement “as quickly as 24 hours”. It does not publish borrower interest rates, and its stated fund size of $251.37 million is an investor-side figure. None of that has been confirmed as the terms of Finsure Loans Ascend.

The practical rule: until you have the product guide in front of you, quote nothing. A client who is told “around 85 per cent” and later gets 70 per cent has been given a number you did not have.

4. The business-purpose declaration is where files go wrong

Here is the part that deserves more attention than the product launches themselves.

Short-term business loans and many second mortgages sit outside the National Credit Code because the credit is provided wholly or predominantly for business purposes. That exemption is conditional. It depends on the purpose being real, not on a declaration being signed.

The High Court dealt with the limits of that reliance in Stubbings v Jams 2 Pty Ltd [2022] HCA 6, where reliance on pro-forma certificates and declarations did not shield lenders from findings of unconscionable conduct. In 2024, ASIC brought proceedings against Oak Capital alleging that loans were structured through non-trading, asset-poor companies where the funds in substance benefited individual guarantors, and were approved on the value of the security with minimal assessment of the borrower’s capacity to repay. The remedies available under section 12CB of the ASIC Act include loan voidability, damages and pecuniary penalties.

Translate that into a broker’s file. If a client’s stated business purpose is thin, if the borrowing entity has no trading history, if the real beneficiary is an individual, or if the exit strategy is “refinance later” with nothing behind it — a signed declaration will not carry the file on its own. What carries the file is contemporaneous evidence that you asked, that you were told something specific, and that the answer made sense.

5. Where the Best Interests Duty bites

The Best Interests Duty applies to regulated credit assistance. It does not follow you into an unregulated business loan. But that boundary is far less useful in practice than it looks, for two reasons.

First, most brokers writing these products also hold the client’s regulated business. A client with a home loan and a second mortgage is one relationship, and a review of the regulated file will inevitably surface the unregulated one.

Second, ASIC has been explicit about the standard of reasoning it expects. Commissioner Alan Kirkland told the MFAA conference in Melbourne on 22 July 2026: “Acting in the customer’s best interests emphatically does not mean simply taking orders when you know a product isn’t right for them.” He added that “if the reasons for a recommendation are boilerplate factors that could apply to anyone, then it will be hard to demonstrate that the recommendation was in that customer’s best interests”. ASIC expects to publish its best interests duty report in the final quarter of this calendar year.

ASIC has also been active on the funding side of private credit. Its surveillance reports on private credit identified mis-selling, opaque fee structures, inconsistent valuation practices and concentration in higher-risk real estate exposures, and gave the industry a 12 to 18 month window to remediate. That work targets funds and their investors rather than broker conduct — but it tells you the sector has the regulator’s attention, and that attention rarely stays in one lane.

6. The commercial case, honestly stated

None of the above is a reason to avoid these products. The demand is real and the numbers are not marginal.

National bridging loan volume ran 24.7 per cent above its six-month average in May 2026, with Victoria 46 per cent, Queensland 36 per cent, Western Australia 15 per cent and New South Wales 13 per cent above their averages. Bridgit’s chief commercial officer, Stephen Doyle, put the structural case: “Bridging finance has become more normalised because it now better reflects how people actually transact in today’s property market.”

On the private side, Finsure’s 68 per cent increase in non-conforming share since January is a demand signal from inside the channel, not a marketing claim about the market generally. And ASCF chief executive Richard Taylor pointed to the same structural driver Finsure did: “As the property market continues to evolve off the back of recent legislative changes, I have no doubt our flexible solutions will give brokers the options they need to support more clients.”

The commercial logic for a brokerage is straightforward. Purchase volumes have thinned. Clients who cannot be placed with a mainstream lender either get solved or get lost. A broker who can place a bridging or short-term facility keeps a relationship that would otherwise walk. The question is not whether to offer these products. It is whether your file quality is good enough to survive writing them at volume.

7. Your pre-flight checklist before the first deal

1. Get the product guide, not the press release. Confirm rate, fees, maximum LVR, minimum and maximum loan size, term, extension terms and default rate in writing before you quote anything to a client.
2. Establish whether the loan is regulated. Do not assume. Work out, for each deal, whether the National Credit Code applies, and record the basis for that conclusion on file.
3. Interrogate the purpose properly. Record the specific use of funds in the client’s own words. A one-line declaration with a tick box is the weakest possible evidence.
4. Test the exit with evidence. For bridging, that means a contract of sale, a listing, or a settlement date. For private lending, a refinance exit needs a lender and a plausible timeline, not an intention.
5. Model the late exit. Work out what the loan costs if the exit slips by three months, and put that figure in front of the client in writing.
6. Check your own accreditation and disclosure. Confirm what you are authorised to write, how the product is remunerated, and that your disclosure to the client reflects it.
7. Keep the regulated file clean. If the same client also holds regulated credit with you, make sure the reasoning on that file stands on its own and is not contaminated by the unregulated deal.

8. What to watch next

• Published product terms for AFG Home Loans Bridge and Finsure Loans Ascend, which had not been disclosed publicly at the time of writing.
• ASIC’s best interests duty report, expected in the final quarter of this calendar year.
• Whether other aggregators follow into named private lending, as distinct from bridging — Finsure is currently the outlier in naming its private funder.
• Any extension of ASIC’s private credit work from fund conduct toward distribution conduct.
• Non-conforming share across the channel — Finsure’s 68 per cent is one aggregator’s data. Watch whether AFG, Connective or LMG publish comparable figures.