Featured Workplace: Inside Prospa’s New Sydney Offices

Small business lender fintech Prospa has grown incredibly quickly in the five years since it begun. It started with $60 million funding in 2015 and had the eighth biggest capital raise of last year at $25 million, according to Right Click Capital.

Prospa uses proprietary technology to facilitate its online loan application workflow, with lending approval and funds available to approved customers within 24 hours.

Their latest hire is Raj Bhat, who joins the Sydney fintech as Head of Group Capital Management.

He’s one of Australia’s top debt markets experts, having been involved in over $5 billion in capital raising across a range of ASX-listed and privately held Australasian companies over the past 8 years at KPMG, as well as holding senior roles at Barclays Capital, Westpac and ANZ.

Business Insider was recently invited to tour the company’s new office in Sydney CBD.

Let’s take a look around at their new digs.

We’ll start at the ground-floor lobby. Prospa is in the same building as MTV and Viacom. Follow that man around the corner to find the lifts.

Here’s reception on level one. Check out the little living wall in the corner.

This is Prospa’s mascot dog’s teepee bed by reception. His name is Carlos.

Carlos is CEO Greg’s cavoodle, who visits 2-3 days a week (but unfortunately not when we visited). He even features in a mural in one kitchen.

Check in using an iPad

and take a seat while you wait.

Enter the office, turn right, and here’s the function space where company-wide meetings and external events are held.

Here’s the kitchen on this level.

This isn’t the main kitchen though, that’s one level up.

The booth-style seating is popular for meetings and for people to eat lunch together.

Here’s the mural featuring Carlos the cavoodle.

There are funky pods dotted around the office.

These ones are used for impromptu meetings, but it looks like this one has been configured to optimise comfort.

As you can see, it’s open plan

but if you need privacy, these pods are the ultimate focus tool.

Here’s the customer team.

They’re in charge of acquisition and happiness of clients, and are on the phone a lot. These empty shelves will be filled with knick knacks that Prospa has asked their clients to send over.

This tea point is another area for people to congregate and chat.

Let’s head upstairs.

This is the credit team.

They have their own space and privacy curtain as they deal with confidential information. Prospa’s technology is able to scan 400 different data points to thoroughly check each prospective client’s application.

This may be enough, but the credit team always a human eye run over every single application before approving, just to be sure all bases are covered.

This set up is perfect for video conference calls or small meetings.

Here’s the main kitchen.

There were interesting paraphernalia left over from last week’s Friday drinks around the room. Can you see the inflatable swan in the right corner?

Friday drinks are a serious occasion here. Each team puts together a cheese board or some nibbles for themselves. For the bigger monthly company-wide update meetings, each team is assigned the responsibility to organise the drinks theme for the whole office.

There has been karaoke, an 80’s theme where they had a music quiz and prizes for the best costumes, a Mexican theme; complete with sombreros and tequila, and a cruise ship/nautical theme.

There’s a pool table and ping pong table.

The ping pong table gets used a lot. There are tournaments that are played throughout the year, and apparently they can get pretty heated.

The perks workers enjoys are excellent. Lunches are provided by Prospa’s clients on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Wednesday’s lunch is the “nice” weekly lunch — healthy things like sushi and salad are on the menu. On Friday, it’s more of a cheat-meal vibe with the “naughty” lunch of the week, when pizza and burgers from Bare Grill are served.

Otherwise, people bring in their own lunch a lot at Prospa. The engineering team often bring large lunches to share amongst their team to eat together.

They even offer massages from qualified masseuses that visit on Mondays and Thursdays.

These booths are used for meetings as well as eating lunch.

The office is very health-oriented.

There’s a run club on Tuesdays and Thursdays, ultimate frisbee teams in summer as well as a group that go to the gym together at 6.30am. There are 3 showers (BYO towel). They even have bike racks.

There’s low staff turnover. Prospa says it’s to do with an intense cultural interview process.

It’s a separate interview where a small team of people who have been with Prospa for some time interview candidates to review their fit culturally with the company.

After moving into their new office, the Prospa team found curios left over from previous tenants.

This intriguing contraption sits outside CEO Greg’s office — but no one could tell me exactly what it is. One suggestion was it could be a barometric pressure measuring system.

Spaces like these are used for lunches or larger meetings.

The boardroom gets plenty of natural light, and is used a lot.

Meditation workshops are run in here every Wednesday for an hour and are incredibly popular. When Business Insider visited, there was an employee lying down in the boardroom by themselves, having their own meditation session.

Tucked away in the back, there’s a quiet section for hotdesking.