The bank has lagged its major competitors on the release of a digital mortgage product
ANZ has been much slower rolling out its ANZ Plus digital mortgage product than its top rivals. However, the bank has defended its more deliberate pace, saying it is positioning itself for a spike in direct online lending with a process that’s fully digital.
Peter Dalton, ANZ design and delivery manager, told reporters Wednesday that the bank had started beta testing its digital mortgage, but didn’t expect to launch the product until the second half of next year, The Australian reported.
“We’ve looked at other banks. This is a fully digital home loan proposition; there is no other bank that we can find – maybe some of the small neobanks … that has a fully digital home loan proposition,” Dalton said. “Many of them in the credit assessment process have human beings looking at the credit assessment. So are we worried we’re missing the boat? No … We are going as fast as we can, and we think this is where the industry is going.”
ANZ has lagged behind its competitors on rolling out digital mortgages, although it launched the ANZ Plus digital banking platform this year with savings accounts, The Australian reported.
ANZ’s digital home loan launch will begin with a minimum viable product before the bank adds other functionality and categories, according to The Australian. ANZ will also eventually make online home loans available to investors and mortgage brokers.
In May, the Commonwealth Bank introduced a digital mortgage, Unloan, while National Australia Bank launched a new home loan platform last year. Westpac’s direct online mortgage is available for sole applicants and will expand to include other categories, including investors and couples, in 2023.
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The ANZ Plus platform currently has about 100,000 customers and more than $2 billion in deposits, with an average customer balance of about $21,000. Thirty per cent (30%) of those customers are new to the bank, while the remainder are existing customers who moved to the platform, according to The Australian.
Dalton said that while the digital mortgage was a “materially lower cost” proposition for ANZ than its traditional home loans, the bank had not decided whether the digital product would be priced at a lower rate.
“We would like to reflect that in the price, but we haven’t made that decision yet,” he said.
Dalton said ANZ had studied banks across Europe, the UK and the US in designing its digital loan. However, the bank is still waiting to become a data recipient under the open banking regime – something it expects to happen in early 2023.
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