Yellow Brick Road mortgage book hits $1.5 billion ahead of Celebrity Apprentice marketing blitz

Mark Bouris’s Yellow Brick Road (YBR) franchise network grew its mortgage book by 21% to around $1.5 billion in the first three months of the year, its latest quarterly update reveals.

The growth in mortgage lending follows its new funding tie-up with Macquarie in November last year and just before it commenced its YBR branding blitz with Mark Bouris as the host of Channel 9’s Celebrity Apprentice.

Season three of Celebrity Apprentice, which kicked-off this week with a modest 866,000-viewer premier according to overnight OzTam metro figures, will feature a “YBR episode” based around a new product launch. (Channel Seven's much-mocked "Celebrity Splash" managed 1.3 million viewers with The Voice managing over two million.)

Last year, series two of Celebrity Apprentice premiered with 1.277 million viewers.

The Celebrity Apprentice series is also running alongside a “fully supported television advertising campaign”.

Channel 9’s Nine Ventures consumer investment group holds an 18% stake in Yellow Brick Road with Mark Bouris paying $2.65 million to sponsor reality television series on prime time television for three years with Bouris as host and contestants like Roxy Jacenko and the wannabe pop star Prinnie Stevens who was the first to be fired.

As for the product initiative, it could be a superannuation offering with YBR revealing plans for a “major product launch in the area of superannuation in late May 2013”.

Other products in the pipeline include a term deposit offering, a cash management account and credit card.

YBR attributed the growth in mortgage applications and settlements to its Empower Home Loan discount product offering.

The figures show the company now has 155 branches.

YBR reported a 32% in branch-generated receipts of $3.51 million for the quarter compared with $2.66 million in the previous corresponding period as a result of increased mortgage settlements and wealth revenue.