GOUMENIS I have been quite surprised because we have been speaking to a lot of potential new clients throughout the pandemic. There seems to be investor appetite to provide the credit these clients want to access so there should be opportunities in the market for newer players. This is particularly the case for those driven by technology and data.

WAGSTAFF I agree. There still seems to a lot of new activity in the auto- and debtor-finance spaces. The banks generally are not well suited to auto lending so there is ongoing opportunity for nonbank providers in this sector.

Debtor finance is part of SME funding. The AOFM [Australian Office of Financial Management] is supporting a number of clients doing different types of lending against receivables or particular specialist asset classes, in medical receivables for example. We are surprised at how resilient the pipeline has been.

DALTON We started getting interest from new players, mostly in the fintech sector, through the latter part of 2019. This was partly the result of the government establishing the Australian Business Securitisation Fund and looking to stimulate lending in this part of the market.

Over the last 4-5 months, with the impact of COVID-19 and the activity of the AOFM through the SFSF [Structured Finance Support Fund] and FSPV [forbearance special-purpose vehicle], we have had approaches from institutions looking to become Australian Securitisation Forum members. They want to be involved with the community and undertake our education courses.

NUNEZ We are always looking at everything! We are a diversified credit investor and structured credit is only one part of what we do. We also invest in investment-grade corporate bonds and loans, and subinvestment-grade, private corporate debt. When we look at securitisation, we review it against all these other credit sectors and assess the relative value.

We consider alternative structured-credit assets and we are very much involved in the asset-backed space across autos, cards, fintechs and trade-receivables financing. We are comfortable to look at new opportunities but it is important new issuers can show a track record managing these assets through cycles. There is a lot of early discussion when looking at new assets and it can be a long process, but we are happy to engage.

There has been some rebalancing of demand from some investors. But, on the whole, we view structured credit as a well-protected, yield-generating diversifier, which is attractive to our clients. The appetite volume may have declined through this volatile period but we remain a key player in this market.