Non-major is working with brokers to reimagine loan origination
The broking sector continues to battle the duplication-of-effort scourge.
Imagine spending a decent chunk of your afternoon filling out compliance forms, ID checks and income reports with your first-home buyer customer, only for the lender to toss your work in the bin and start the whole process from scratch.
Far from an uncommon occurrence, needless duplication is a massive bugbear for the mortgage finance industry, and one that non-major AMP Bank is on a mission to stamp out.
Such was the discussion at a roundtable hosted by AMP Bank this week that brought leading aggregators together in one room to hear about the bank’s overhaul of its loan-origination process.
Attendees got the lowdown on how AMP Bank is implementing a range of new technologies that were first announced in November, but are now starting to kick into gear.
Tangible solutions to defeating duplication once and for all centre around reusing as much verified data that has already been collected by the broker as possible.
The group is using advanced, real-time income-verification tools to validate borrower income early in the application process, while making it easier for brokers to share pre-collected data.
AMP Bank tapped the expertise of loan origination platform Simpology and MSA National to develop the solutions.
Having first tested the waters via its direct-lending channel, the bank is planning to roll these new processes out through the aggregator channel in a staged approach over the coming months.
Reimagining the broker experience
It sounds like a no-brainer, but the reusing customer data throughout the loan-origination process is not always the standard.
“Brokers do a lot of work around verification of income, expenditure and ID through their initial compliance process that they operate under,” AMP Bank’s head of lending and everyday banking distribution, Paul Herbert (pictured), explained to MPA.
However, lenders will often turn around and get the customer to go through the whole process all over again. “This really frustrates the broker and is something we hear about all the time,” said Herbert.
AMP Bank aims to improve this issue, with broker engagement playing an essential part in refining the process.
“2025 is really a year that we reimagine what the experience for our brokers is like,” Herbert said. By “removing that duplication of effort and repurposing and reusing as much verified data as we possibly can that’s already collected”, Herbert believes AMP Bank has “a really powerful tool” in its arsenal.
Duplication of effort is far from an AMP Bank-specific problem. Speak with any broker, and they will tell you that Big Four banks, the leading non-bank lenders and the challengers are equally guilty.
But, as a challenger, the onus is on the likes of AMP Bank to deliver a strong alternative to the majors that brokers will want to recommend to their customers. On the bright side, this is often what drives innovation.
“We really want to focus on what our customers want, and what we're doing is a direct response to industry feedback, broker feedback and customer feedback about removing waste and saving time,” Herbert said.
“To do that, we have to take a purposeful step. We want to do something bold, to actually deliver and not just talk about it.”
