Westpac partners with NextGen to speed up home loan applications

Australian bank Westpac has partnered with NextGen, a technology solutions provider to the lending industry, to bring the benefits of Open Banking to mortgage brokers and their customers, to streamline the home loan applications process.

Through this partnership, Westpac customers applying for home loans across all of its brands – Westpac, St. George, Bank of Melbourne and BankSA – will be able to share their financial information, including bank statements and transaction histories, with their mortgage brokers via Open Banking.

In turn, brokers receive instant and secure access to a customer’s financial data from more than 110 participating lenders, speeding up the initial stages of the home application process.

Warren Shaw, head of broker distribution at Westpac, said: “Empowering our brokers and customers to auto-populate a range of critical data into applications leads to less rework and, therefore, improved decision times.

“Not only is it simpler and faster for customers to share their data in this way, but it saves brokers’ valuable time, so they can focus on building relationships and growing their business.”

Last year, Commonwealth Bank of Australia became one of the first lenders to enable Open Banking for mortgage brokers in NextGen’s loan lodgement platform ‘ApplyOnline’.

NextGen’s ApplyOnline auto-populates customer data and generates “tailored” bank statements.

At the time the partnership was announced, NextGen revealed that, in Australia, fewer than 15% of all applications are approved without the need for additional information post-submission, resulting in an average 14-day waiting period for unconditional approval across the industry.

Tony Carn, NextGen’s chief customer officer, called it “a win-win for both customers and brokers”, with a faster approval time and the “enhanced security and fraud protections” of the government-regulated Consumer Data Right framework.

“The fact that Westpac is making Open Banking available in ApplyOnline demonstrates their commitment to using the latest technology available to deliver a superior experience for both brokers and customers,” he added.