For Pepper, it was Australian borrowers left behind by established lenders. We identified our niche and deployed specialised tools to underwrite these debts. The result shook up the market and gave thousands of underserved consumers access to home ownership.
It led to an innovation in the shape of Residential Mortgage-backed Securities, prized among astute Debt Investors in the early 2000s. Since then, we’ve identified underserviced niches around the globe. But we’ve also exercised caution when it mattered.
In 2007, after noticing unsettling signs in Europe’s debt market, Pepper scaled down its operations and shifted its focus to portfolio-servicing. While we don’t claim to have foreseen the recession of 2008, our caution proved prescient and prophetic, and found us well placed to capitalise on the global market recovery that followed.
2011 saw Pepper buy back its equity from Merrill Lynch and acquire GE Capital in Australia and New Zealand. It was the first of many acquisitions over the next decade which saw Pepper expand from Europe to the Far East.
