Meet the team
Lynda Coker
CEO & Co-founder
Lynda has c. 25 years in financial services as a chartered accountant and corporate finance advisor to large banks and asset managers. She has worked with Government and Financial Services Regulators on policy settings both in Australia and in the UK. Lynda is an ecosystem builder in the FinTech arena and an award-winning mentor, advisor, Board member and investor to early- stage tech businesses.
After living overseas for 15 years, Lynda realised that wealth creation in Australia has been led by property vs. any other investment, and the property market has significantly left behind the next generation.
Noticing that many large banks were digitising existing products rather than striving for product and market innovation, Lynda started thinking of a way to not just accelerate and enable housing affordability, but create flexibility and better access to home equity for all generations – especially for her parents to better afford their retirement.
Linking in with Liz (whom she met previously at Volt Bank) and discussing the concept further, Co-operty was born in 2023.
Liz Rochaix
Co-founder
Liz has c. 30 years in the financial services sector. In that time she has led many high performing teams across product, marketing, technology and operations areas for major banks and non-banks institutions in their retail, SME, wealth, corporate and institutional businesses. She has also been a founder in the FinTech space and has been at the forefront of product disruption and innovation in financial services and as well as the utilisation of technology to digitise and improve customer experiences and outcomes.
Liz has always had a passion for solving real customer problems, and her ability to look at things differently has helped her bring about meaningful change to the customer experience in the businesses she has worked in. She is concerned that digital transformation in financial services today usually means digitising existing flawed products and processes without any meaningful improvement to the underlying product, service, or experience. It rarely involves true innovation or a stepped change in customer outcomes. With this in mind, Liz co-founded Co-operty in 2023 with the goal of finding a way to help all Australians realise the dream of owning their own home. Liz is acutely aware that something fundamentally and systemically has to change to improve housing affordability in this country.
As the mum of two teenage children, Liz worries that they will never have the opportunity to afford to buy a home, and she wants to do everything she can to help solve the housing affordability crisis. Through the introduction of an alternative ownership model, and giving optionality to the way we buy and sell residential property, Liz believes that her kids can one day live in a home that they own.
Frank Austin
Product & Distribution
Frank has 30+ years financial services experience with a track record of delivering quality customer solutions across customer relationship management (CRM), marketing, product management, communications, business performance, retail & third party distribution, and corporate services.
In recent years Frank has worked through the trials and tribulations of changing the way financial services are delivered in Australia via the digitisation of the end to end customer experience in banking. His key insight is that the devil is always in the detail, so the more work you can do upfront to understand the customer problem you’re endeavouring to solve, the better the options to solve it, including the technical inter-dependencies and the higher the chance of success!
Frank is passionate about improving customer experience and is looking forward to helping Co-operty change the way people acquire residential property via co-ownership.
Harry Brooker
Head of Engineering
With a wealth of engineering experience and enthusiasm, Harry has successfully led numerous software development projects and engineering initiatives. He excels in creating robust applications supported by comprehensive automated testing suites. Harry began his career as a software testing engineer, where he honed his skills in developing effective testing methodologies that balance quality assurance with budget and time constraints. His diverse career spans a variety of industries, including Commercial, Retail, and Institutional Banking; Arts and Entertainment; Mining; Blockchain Technology; Identity Theft Protection; and Accounting.
Beyond his professional achievements, Harry is deeply committed to addressing the housing affordability crisis. He is especially motivated by the difficulties of increasing property prices and the high rents encountered by him and his peers, as the younger generations feel more and more that the dream of home ownership is out of their reach.