Better Home & Finance Holding Company (NASDAQ: BETR) has appointed board member Daniel Lewis as interim chief executive, replacing founder Vishal Garg effective immediately, the company said Monday in a press release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Garg, who built the online mortgage lender into one of the most closely watched β and controversial β names in fintech, will stay on the board and work with Lewis on the transition.
The leadership change comes as Better pushes toward profitability after years of losses and reports preliminary second-quarter results that beat its own prior guidance. It also arrives as the company continues to shop its U.K. bank subsidiary, Birmingham Bank, through a sale process led by FT Partners.
An “orderly and effective” transition
Garg and the board “mutually agreed” that he would transition out of the CEO role, according to the release. He will continue working with Lewis “to ensure an orderly and effective leadership transition.”
“Under Vishal’s leadership, Better built Tinman and established Betsy, bringing automation to a process that had not changed in decades,” said Harit Talwar, Better’s board chairman. “On behalf of the entire board, we thank Vishal for his significant contributions to the company in his role as CEO and look forward to continuing to work with him and benefitting from his expertise as a director.”
Garg, in his own statement, framed the move as timing rather than ouster. “We built Better to disrupt the mortgage loan industry by developing and integrating AI solutions to simplify the process for borrowers across one of the largest asset classes in the world,” he said. “In the last 10 years, we have helped more than 600,000 customers buy or refinance their homes across more than $110 billion in loan volumes, providing testament to the durable demand for what we have created. Better is at an important inflection point, and now is the right time for new leadership.”
Lewis has spent the past several months advising Better’s board and management on cost reductions, enterprise partnerships and operations, first as an independent advisor and more recently as a board member. He was CEO of Toronto-based Ascend Fundraising Solutions from 2018 to 2023 and, before that, spent nine years at Citigroup before founding investment firm Orange Capital in 2005. The board will determine his compensation, which the company said will be weighted heavily toward shareholder returns and long-term operating performance.
Strategy shifts toward partner-led distribution
Lewis signaled a shift in how Better plans to grow. “Better will win by leveraging that experience to manufacture mortgages efficiently, not by outspending competitors on customer acquisition,” he said, describing a platform model in which partners β enterprise customers and independent mortgage brokers β own customer acquisition while Better’s Tinman technology handles underwriting, operations, capital markets and regulatory infrastructure.
He said Better now expects annualized cost reductions to exceed $45 million by year-end, up from a previous $25 million target, and that the company sees strengthening demand for home equity lines of credit as an area for expansion.
Better also released preliminary second-quarter figures ahead of its scheduled earnings date. Funded loan volume was $1.67 billion, up 38% year-over-year; revenue was $54.7 million, up 28%; and the company posted a net loss of $30.6 million and adjusted EBITDA of negative $14 million, which includes a $6.5 million benefit from the release of a TRID compliance reserve tied to loans originated before June 2022. The company cautioned the figures are preliminary estimates pending completion of its financial closing procedures. Better moved its full second-quarter earnings release and investor call up to Aug. 6, from a previously scheduled Aug. 10 date.
What it means
The verified facts are the board’s own account: a negotiated CEO transition, preliminary Q2 numbers that beat the company’s earlier guidance, and an accelerated cost-cutting target. Whether the platform pivot Lewis described marks a durable strategic shift or simply reflects Better’s need to control spending is analysis, not yet demonstrated by results β the company’s actual second-quarter earnings call, now set for Aug. 6, should provide the first test of how investors read the change. Related moves in real estate leadership, including CyrusOne’s CEO transition and Keller Williams’ recent leadership appointments, show boardroom turnover remains a live theme across real estate-adjacent industries this year.
