SocietyOne, a peer-to-peer lender that is partly owned by Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Stokes and James Packer's companies, expects to start making profits within the next 12 to 18 months.
The start-up lender has in recent years been heavily investing in marketing, technology and new staff as it seeks to establish peer-to-peer lending on Australia's financial landscape, pinching some of the profits banks make from the $100 billion personal credit market.
After a year of rapid loan growth, chief executive Jason Yetton said the lender now faced the prospect of breaking even, though this would depend on how much it invested.
"We think it can reach profitability over the next 12 to 18 months, but to some degree that depends on how much we continue to invest in the business," Mr Yetton said in an interview with BusinessDay.
"It does take a lot of investment in technology, people, in building the brand, in marketing."
The move towards profitability follows a capital raising earlier this year from SocietyOne, which also counts a fund owned by Westpac, where Mr Yetton was previously a senior executive, as a shareholder.
Mr Murdoch's News Corp Australia, Mr Stokes' investment company Australian Capital Equity and Mr Packer's Consolidated Press Holdings own slightly more than a third of SocietyOne, it is understood. Westpac's Reinventure fund holds a share of more than 10 per cent.
Four customer-owned lenders are also shareholders: Beyond Bank Australia, G&C; Mutual Bank, Maritime, Mining and Power Credit Union, and Regional Australia Bank.
While SocietyOne is currently loss-making, its progress is a sign of peer-to-peer lending gradually becoming more established in Australia, as it is in the US and Britain.
Peer-to-peer lending is where individuals or institutions lend directly to borrowers over an online platform, cutting out the need for a bank.
Mr Yetton argued the idea was gaining traction with customers frustrated with banks, as well as larger investors in search of decent returns.
Mr Yetton said SocietyOne's loan book had grown 253 per cent to $110 million in the 2016 calendar year so far, helped by a brand campaign that has sought to pinch the banks' lower-risk credit card and personal loan customers.
Even so, SocietyOne still has a tiny share of the market, and Mr Yetton said it was too early to be thinking about a potential listing of the business.
Mr Yetton argued more customers were open to new models such as P2P lending because they were disenfranchised with banks, which have come under fire from politicians over loan pricing decisions, and a series of scandals in the industry.
A parliamentary inquiry into the big four banks last month argued banks should be forced to make more of their data on individual customers available to rivals, where that is what customers want. Mr Yetton backed these recommendations, which would support digital rivals to banks.
"What is there to fear from a big bank providing this? The main thing they'll fear is competition leading to better deals and growth of other players," he said. "I would think it's quite fundamental to improving competition."