AFG Securities Grew 30% and MA Money 127%: Your Aggregator’s Own Lender Is Now Its Profit Engine

Two results, one structure

On 20 August 2026, Australian Finance Group released its FY26 result. Within the same week, MA Financial — which owns Finsure — released its first-half accounts for the six months to 30 June. Read separately, they are two ordinary earnings releases from two listed companies. Read together, they describe the same structural change to the business you sit inside.

In both cases, the fastest-growing part of the business was not the broker network. It was the lender the group owns.

That matters to brokers for a reason that has nothing to do with scandal and everything to do with paperwork. When the entity that holds or supports your credit licence also manufactures a product on your panel, the way you document a placement with that product has to account for the relationship. Most brokers know this in the abstract. Fewer have revisited their file-note template since the in-house lender stopped being a rounding error.

AFG: the step-up came from the balance sheet

AFG reported statutory net profit after tax of $49 million for FY26, up 39%, with underlying NPATA of $54 million, up 33%. Underlying return on equity reached 23% and the cost-to-income ratio came in at 55%. Residential settlements across the network rose 18% to $75 billion. The group declared a fully franked full-year dividend of 9.5 cents per share, with a final dividend of 4.8 cents payable on 1 October 2026, alongside a buyback of up to $15 million.

The distribution numbers are solid. The manufacturing numbers are the story. AFG Securities — the group’s own lending book — grew 30% to $7.1 billion. Segment EBITDA rose 107% to $33 million. Net interest margin expanded 9 basis points to 125 basis points, with an exit margin of 128 basis points against a stated through-the-cycle target of around 120. The segment’s cost-to-income ratio improved 14 percentage points to 40%. AFG completed $2.2 billion of term issuance during the year.

Chief executive David Bailey put it plainly on the results call, as reported in Investing.com’s transcript: “Manufacturing delivered the largest step-up in earnings. The securities business benefited from the combination of a larger book, improved funding, and increasing operating leverage.”

That single sentence is the clearest statement of what has changed. A decade ago, an aggregator’s earnings were a geared bet on how much its brokers wrote. On the CFO’s own numbers, only about a tenth of AFG’s earnings now move directly with new residential volumes. The rest comes from trail, from services, and from the margin on money the group lends itself.

Finsure: fewer brokers, a bigger book, a fee-for-service model

MA Financial’s half-year told a version of the same story from the other direction. Group underlying revenue reached a record $230.1 million, up 41%, with underlying NPAT of $35.9 million, up 59%, and the interim dividend lifted to 8 cents from 6 cents.

Within that, Finsure’s loans on platform rose 25% to $193 billion. Joint chief executive Julian Biggins told analysts that “Finsure continues its growth journey, increasing its loans on platform by 25%”, and noted July settlements of around $8 billion, up about 10% year on year.

Finsure achieved that book growth with a smaller broker base. As The Broker Times reported last month, Finsure’s credit representative numbers fell from 2,776 to 2,624 over the June quarter. MA Financial characterised the reduction as roughly a 4% rationalisation, attributing it, in reporting by Mortgage Professional Australia, to “a deliberate focus on broker quality, compliance and efficiency”. Revenue per broker rose 16% to $13,000 over the half. MPA also reported Finsure’s share of the Australian broker market at 17.4% at 30 June, down from 18.9% at December 2025 — a figure we have seen reported by that outlet and have not been able to trace to a primary release.

Biggins described the Finsure model as “predominantly a fee for service” structure, and therefore “less exposed to flows and more to revenue per broker”. Meanwhile MA Money — the group’s own lender, a sibling to the aggregator rather than a subsidiary of it — grew its loan book 127% to $7.5 billion, with the company guiding to FY26 NPAT of $25–30 million from that business.

The FY29 targets are the part to read twice

Results are history. Targets are intent, and both groups published theirs.

MA Financial set out FY2029 goals including group assets under management of $24 billion (from $15.5 billion), Finsure loans on platform of $300 billion (from $193 billion), and an MA Money loan book of $15 billion (from $7.5 billion). Run the percentages: the aggregation platform is targeted to grow around 55%, the in-house lender to double.

AFG’s stated ambitions run the same way. The group is targeting an AFG Securities book of $9 billion by FY29, from $7.1 billion. It also wants broker services income — the software and support layer, not the commission flow — to reach 30% of distribution gross profit, from 23% in FY26. Broker services income was $24 million in FY26, up 13%, with BrokerEngine subscribers up 19% to 4,400.

Neither group is hiding this. It is in the investor presentations, which is precisely why brokers should read it: the commercial direction of your aggregator has been published, in numbers, three years ahead.

Why this is not a scandal — and why it still matters

Some proportion is required here. Vertical integration in the broker channel is neither new nor improper. Aggregators have manufactured white-label and own-brand product for years, it is disclosed, and it has often produced sharper pricing and faster credit decisions for clients who would otherwise be at the back of a major’s queue. Neither AFG nor MA Financial has been accused of any wrongdoing, and nothing in either result suggests brokers are being directed towards in-house product.

The scale check matters too. At a record, AFG Securities wrote 5.3% of AFG’s residential settlements. Roughly nineteen in every twenty loans written by an AFG broker still went to a third-party lender. This is fast growth from a small base, not a captive channel.

The question to put to your licensee

ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 273 sets out how the best interests duty and the conflict priority rule apply to mortgage brokers. RG 273.144 explains that where there is a conflict between the consumer’s interests and those of the credit licensee, the credit representative, another representative of the licensee, or an associate of any of them, the consumer’s interests must be given priority.

RG 273.147 is more specific: “you must not recommend a product or service of a related party that would create extra revenue for yourself, your credit licensee or another related party, unless doing so would also be in the consumer’s best interests.” RG 273.159 gives examples of conduct that would breach the rule, including recommending a loan with a higher interest rate than comparable alternatives on the basis of commission. Separately, RG 273.112–113 addresses maintaining a reasonably representative panel of credit providers.

Note the shape of that guidance carefully. It does not prohibit recommending a related party’s product. It conditions it: unless doing so would also be in the consumer’s best interests. That is a documentation obligation as much as a conduct one.

Whether a particular in-house lender is a related party or associate for your purposes depends on your licensing structure — whether you are a credit representative under the aggregator’s licence or hold your own ACL, and how the lending entity sits in the corporate group. That is not a question to answer from a blog post. It is a question to put in writing to your licensee or compliance manager, and to keep the answer on file. This article is general information, not legal or compliance advice.

You are now a per-broker number

The second shift in these results is quieter and affects every broker regardless of who they are aggregated with.

AFG reported gross profit per broker of $43,000, up 12%. MA Financial reported revenue per broker of $13,000, up 16%. Those two figures are not comparable — different definitions, different segments, and a full year against a half — and nobody should line them up side by side. What matters is that both groups chose to lead with a per-broker metric at all.

That is a change in how the industry’s owners describe growth. Recruitment used to be the headline. Productivity is now the headline. For a broker, three consequences follow:

• Low-volume writers are a cost line. If your settlements sit well below your group’s average, expect more attention on activity, accreditation currency and compliance overhead — and be ready to make the case for your own economics at renewal.
• Quality culls are now a stated strategy, not an accident. Finsure’s own framing was quality, compliance and efficiency. Whatever the underlying cause in any individual case, groups are willing to describe a shrinking network as a deliberate choice.
• Services income is being grown on purpose. AFG’s target of lifting broker services to 30% of distribution gross profit means the software and support layer is meant to become a larger share of what your aggregator earns from you.

There is a negotiating read here too. A group earning a 125 basis point net interest margin on its own book, with segment EBITDA up 107%, is not short of margin. That is useful context when you are discussing platform fees, split arrangements, marketing support or CRM inclusions at your next agreement review. It is not a lever on its own, but it is information you did not have three weeks ago.

What to review this week

What to watch next

Three things will tell you whether this trend is accelerating. First, AFG Securities’ share of AFG residential settlements: 5.3% is the record now, and the FY29 book target implies it goes higher. Second, MA Money’s progress toward $15 billion, and whether that growth is sourced disproportionately through Finsure brokers. Third, whether ASIC says anything further about vertically integrated credit arrangements — the regulator has been active on broker conduct through 2026, and structures that grow quickly tend to attract attention eventually.

None of that requires a broker to change who they aggregate with or where they place a loan. It does mean the file note for a related-party placement is doing more work in 2026 than it was doing in 2023, and that the person who benefits from getting it right is you.

The bottom line

Your aggregator has become a different kind of business. Its earnings are less exposed to how much you write and more exposed to what it earns per broker and what it makes on its own book. That is a rational response to a soft volume environment, and in most respects a stable one — a group with diversified earnings is a group less likely to change your commission structure the moment settlements dip.

But the same structure puts a related lender on your panel with a published growth target attached to it. The answer is not suspicion. It is a file note that would read well to a third party twelve months from now, and one email to your compliance team this week.