Bendigo Bank has launched a new composable lending platform, Bendigo Bank Broker, as part of its ongoing transformation journey.
The bank partnered with Seisma and FinXL for the development of the new Bendigo Bank Broker lending platform alongside Infosys for the document management.
The composable lending platform is said to offer the bank reusable, foundational capabilities across multiple engagement channels.
The new solution will gradually be rolled out to more than 3000 brokers using aggregator Finsure, and then to mortgage brokers nationwide in 2024.
The composable design of the platform means the solution can serve beyond the broker channel, but also be reused for other channels including strategic partners and consumer lending.
“Whether a partner or a customer or a Bendigo staff member initiates the loan online or in branch or over the phone, it will leverage the same underlying solution,” a Bendigo bank spokesperson told iTnews.
“The channel where the application is first captured might differ but the lending processes from that point are the same.
The other aspect is the automation and orchestration nature of the platform can guide loan applications “through the many lending sub-processes, orchestrating API calls to integrated internal and external systems.”
“The platform itself doesn’t perform all these functions, but it orchestrates across many sub-systems in the lending journey,” the spokesperson continued.
“This means that users no longer have to go to separate systems to complete the lending steps but can achieve this all in one place with many manual tasks now fully automated.”
The new platform will also see the bank retire more legacy lending systems as it undergoes a simplification and consolidation plan, four years into its transformation strategy.
“The move to a consolidated lending platform underpinned by enterprise core systems enables us to decommission more than 25 legacy applications in lending alone, while reducing cost and risk associated with maintenance, currency and security efforts across the bank,” Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s practice lead for lending technology Nathalie Moss said.
“Automation increases efficiency and enables our people to move from manual processes to assessing and validating by exception, using expertise and experience when it matters.
“With the introduction and enhancement of interfaces to both new and existing core systems, many current and complex manual processes have been automated throughout the end-to-end origination journey,” Moss said.
Moss said some examples of the automation in action include obtaining valuations, title searches, lenders mortgage insurance, credit decisioning, document generation and account creation.
“Thus, freeing up the bank’s front-line staff to focus on customers rather than manual administration tasks,” Moss said.
“Success with APIs starts with thinking about every element of the business – and the ways customers interact – as modular capabilities.
“This includes credit decisioning, ledger, customer master, collaterals, and document management: those fundamental enterprise building blocks that uplift consistency and quality for customers.”
Moss said the ability to reuse APIs means the brokers can use the one system for in-branch and online engagement and take on board customer feedback.
“Every feature ‘drop’ in a core building block becomes available to every consuming channel, improving the experience for our brokers and front-line staff. This also means we can quickly respond to new compliance and regulatory requirements.”
Bendigo Bank branded home loans
The new platform also means brokers can recommend Bendigo Bank branded home loans.
The spokesperson told iTnews the bank “has never been in the broker marker, whereas Adelaide Bank was/still is until we retire it.”
“Brokers couldn’t recommend Bendigo Bank home loans because we weren’t in that specific market. [However] Bendigo Bank Home Loans have always been available via the branch network and online.”
As the Adelaide Bank brand transitions into retirement from late 2024, brokers will be no longer being able to sell Adelaide Bank home loan products.
“We will continue to service Adelaide Bank customers as we transition to Bendigo Bank,” the spokesperson said.
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank chief customer officer Richard Fennell said that “to become Australia’s bank of choice we need to continue to consolidate and simplify our current processes and reduce complexity to allow us to better serve our customers and meet their banking needs.”
“We will start with Finsure to introduce our new lending platform with enhanced automation and digital capability that will see much faster and consistent credit decisioning, giving brokers a far richer experience,” Fennell said.
“New Bendigo Broker customers will also get more choices with a new simple and flexible home loan offering and will have the opportunity to access the full range of value-adding Bendigo Bank products, services, and support, with seamless onboarding experience and improved e-banking facilities,” he said.