Vishal Garg steps down at Better, board names Daniel Lewis interim CEO

Better Home & Finance Holding Co. has appointed board member Daniel Lewis as interim CEO effective immediately, replacing founder Vishal Garg, the company announced Monday.

Garg will remain on the company’s board and work with Lewis to ensure an orderly leadership transition. As interim CEO, Lewis will manage the organization, execute the board-approved operating plan and set the company’s strategic direction. He brings more than 30 years of operating, investment and governance experience.

From 2018 to 2023, Lewis served as CEO of Ascend Fundraising Solutions, a Toronto-based software company. Before that, he worked for Citigroup and founded Orange Capital LLC.

“Under Vishal’s leadership, Better built Tinman and established Betsy, bringing automation to a process that had not changed in decades,” Harit Talwar, chairman of the board, said in a statement.

Garg said Better is at an “important inflection point” and that now is the right time for new leadership. He noted that in the past 10 years, the company has helped more than 600,000 customers buy or refinance homes, with more than $110 billion in loan volume.

The company said the “overwhelming majority” of Lewis’s compensation, to be determined by the board, will be tied to shareholder returns and long-term operating performance. That structure is meant to align leadership with investors as Better pushes toward profitability.

Strategy under Lewis

Better is sharpening its strategy around a platform model in which partners own customer acquisitions while Better focuses on efficient mortgage manufacturing and technology.

“Looking ahead, Better will win by leveraging that experience to manufacture mortgages efficiently, not by outspending competitors on customer acquisition,” Lewis said.

He said all of Better’s distribution channels run on its Tinman platform, which provides technology, underwriting, operations, capital markets and regulatory infrastructure. The goal is to scale volume with structurally lower unit economics while maintaining service levels.

In a statement, Lewis added that current priorities extend beyond existing cost cuts. Better now expects annualized cost reductions to exceed $45 million by year’s end, up from its prior $25 million target.

Better also released preliminary earnings results for the second quarter, which are in line with earlier guidance. This includes funded loan volume ($1.67 billion, up 45% year over year), revenue ($54.7 million, up 28% year over year), net loss ($30.6 million) and adjusted EBITDA (-$14.0 million, including a $6.5 million benefit from a TRID reserve release tied to loans originated before June 2022.)

The company said these figures are based on its estimates and remain subject to completion of financial closing procedures. Better has moved its second-quarter earnings release and investor call to after market close on Aug. 6, ahead of the previously scheduled data of Aug. 10.

Better also said it continues to pursue a sale of its U.K. bank subsidiary, Birmingham Bank, through a process led by FT Partners.

This article was written by Flávia Furlan Nunes and generated with the assistance of HousingWire Automation, then reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.