There’s a story behind every transfer: Odin Mortgage
Helping Australian expats get more bang for their buck with property purchases back home.
Australian owned and headquartered in Hong Kong, Odin Mortgage was co-founded in 2020, the same year they partnered with OFX and began referring clients who needed better value on their large global transfers for real estate.
Odin Mortgage specialises in assisting Aussie expats and foreigners to obtain finance for Australian property purchases and most other mortgage-related services. Odin partnered with OFX in their first year of business, recognising OFX as having “long held a strong name in the FX industry for being quick, competitive and simple to use.” Aussie expat co-founders Ben Wong and Martin Zheng, realised OFX’s “strong Australian ties, which bodes well with our [Odin Mortgage’s] offering and brand”, and wanted to pass on the ease and value of the service to their clients. They quickly discovered this would be a long-lasting relationship. Two years and counting!
Co-founder, Ben Wong, shared that “FX transfers play a massive part in the property purchase cycle. Our clients often have a large portion of their deposit in foreign currency, and require the fastest, most trustworthy and competitive service.”
Converting funds from your local currency, to the currency you’re purchasing property in, isn’t always simple and often involves spending extra money to cover currency conversion fees.
“We had an Australian expat couple residing in Hong Kong, purchase a property in Australia who needed to get a significant amount of Aussie dollars to their lawyer’s trust account in order to complete the settlement. They opted to use OFX due to getting a better exchange rate compared to the one their bank was offering”, said Matt.
Unlike many other businesses during the pandemic, Odin Mortgage reported seeing an increase in their client’s spending, with many making “larger-than-normal” transfers from multiple currencies to AUD to support their repatriation to Australia. Matt Hooper shared that many of those clients found “setting up the OFX account relatively painless.”
“Our customers are all busy individuals so there is always the issue of cost vs convenience. For AUD transfers OFX has consistently provided the best rates. So when sending large amounts of money to Australia, our customers tend to save a meaningful amount by using OFX [compared to other services]”, said Martin.
As for the future of Odin Mortgage, co-founder Ben Wong shared that both the challenge and opportunity in the current geo-economic environment will be “the new shift in the global economy. We [Odin Mortgage] will be assessing very closely any ripple effects from the US and abroad to ascertain any positive or negative impacts to the Australian property market and mortgage market. Rising interest rates to combat the COVID-induced inflation will also have some impacts, which have not yet been fully understood.”
Odin Mortgage has grown rapidly over the last 24 months, having just recently opened their Singapore office. With their sights now set on expanding into the US and UK next, Odin Mortgage are showing no signs of slowing down.
So, how would Odin Mortgage describe OFX in one word? Bang-for-your-buck (well almost one).