iPartners trusts the process

Alternative investment platform iPartners invited its wholesale clients to refinance a warehouse of high-interest consumer loans written by non-bank lender Salt and Lime Funding on May 8, 2024. An iPartners flyer said the facility was "compliant with all portfolio parameters," and the refinancing settled on May 22. 

The next day, iPartners' CEO Travis Miller praised the "significant role" Salt and Lime plays in the financial wellbeing of Australians, in a press release that toasted a new $100 million private credit facility. But 19 days later, McGrathNicol was appointed as receivers of Salt and Lime Funding – now out of receivership and controlled by iPartners.

On April 22, iPartners said it received a portfolio summary containing an image showing a balance of $12.5 million in Salt and Lime Funding's secured warehouse account. But iPartners now claims that the true balance was $1.8 million. On May 1, iPartners was allegedly told that approximately $11 million was "available for lending." And the following day, it allegedly received a group balance sheet showing $17.2 million in cash and equivalents, compared to a true alleged combined warehouse-and-operating balance of about $5.1 million. 

In an investor update seen by Rampart, iPartners said the information was false and supplied to conceal Salt and Lime Funding's true position, so that it would agree to refinance the facilities rather than terminate them. And perhaps that's true. But in a separate update, iPartners asked itself the only question that really matters: how could discrepancies of that scale have escaped its detection? 

"All our usual processes were followed," it said.