Brokers will get access to real-time tracking, digital interface with clients
AMP Bank has outlined why it decided to transform its home loan system, in partnership with origination platform Simpology, and how it will benefit its broker partners and their customers.
The second-tier bank announced on April 30 that it had created a new end-to-end home loan application process with the help of Simpology, which will be piloted in the fourth quarter of 2024 (October/November), before it’s fully rolled out in the second quarter of 2025 (April/May).
AMP Bank said the process would fast-track the time to yes, provide “a superior broker experience, and give greater visibility and certainty of an application from submission to settlement”.
The new loan process will include:
- fully digitised identification processes
- up-front verification of credit-critical data prior to submission
- instant feedback on application data to allow real-time decisions
MPA caught up with AMP Bank group executive Sean O’Malley (pictured below), the bank’s head of lending origination Melissa Christy (pictured above left) and Simpology founder and CEO Kate Gubbins (pictured above right) to get some insights on the new home loan process and what problems it solves.
How AMP Bank found right tech partner
‘We’ve been examining for a little about what's next for us for home loan origination,” O’Malley said. “Brokers are a really important part of our business and the experience we deliver the brokers is really important.”
The bank had gone through the process of reviewing its delivery of the home loan process “and where the positives and opportunities lie”.
“We started looking around the market in Australia and indeed globally to see how might we deliver what we think's the next step in the origination experience for brokers and for our customer,” said O’Malley.
“We'd seen Kate's business grow over the years – it was through that process that we explored Simpology and decided that this was the right step for AMP Bank to really streamline and transform that end-to-end origination process,” he said.
Christy said AMP Bank started the search for the right tech partner to deliver the new system last year, including a request for proposal (RFP) process.
“But as far as developing and building, we started in January this year,” said Christy.
She said the need for a new home loan process was driven both by broker feedback on what they were looking for but also the knowledge that there were solutions in the market that could improve the bank’s time to decision and efficiency.
“We were looking for something that could automate the process … Simpology had the solution we are looking for – we will be able to verify credit critical data upfront, such as PAYG, income, rental income, expenses, and give our brokers more confidence of a decision before they actually submit, which means less rework and makes it more efficient once the application is submitted.”
The transformed process includes a new broker lodgement and origination platform.
“Everything from a broker submitting a deal or filling out a deal to unconditional approval, the whole thing will change,” said Christy.
Faster time to yes
O’Malley said looking at what AMP Bank could achieve with Simpology and what the company had achieved elsewhere, “we think there's absolutely the opportunity here to be fully automated”.
“We’re talking about decisions in hours, not days,” he said. “If you look across the market today, the gold standard is still measured in days. We think this is a platform and an ecosystem that will turn that into hours for us.”
Real-time loan tracking
AMP Bank’s new home loan process will include the ability for brokers to track the progress of their applications in real time.
Gubbins said Simpology wanted to be respectful of every participant in an origination experience.
“We want to achieve a great experience for AMP and their immediate network – their assessors, BDMs and brokers but also their consumers as well,” said Gubbins.
This meant building an ecosystem whereby, based on configurable permissions, AMP Bank could deem “who can reach in and have transparency and understanding of what is going on in an [loan] origination at any time”.
“And also, anyone who should be able to participate in the origination can participate digitally at any time as well.
Gubbins said the system could invite a broker to participate in an activity such as answering questions or collecting new documents, and a consumer could be invited in to do the same.
“Consumers, brokers and BDMs, anyone who’s a relevant participant can have visibility and transparency of what status and what activities are happening even on the AMP Bank side of things. It does all depend on permissions and how we set things up of course.
“From an origination perspective, not only do we use great technology and services to speed things up and make things more convenient, but also importantly, we look after the people who are involved in the origination and they can all be involved appropriately.”
Gubbins said brokers can extend AMP Bank’s system to enable them to have a digital interface with their customer.
“The broker has the same set of tools to be able to digitally talk securely to their consumers, and the consumers can talk again securely back to the broker, and the broker can then pass that detail on to AMP Bank.”
As part of the aim to ensure credit critical data is verified conveniently and easily and populated into applications and workflow, open banking will play a key role in speeding up the process, Gubbins said.
Christy said one of the key benefits was being able to ingest data the broker has collected upfront through bank scraping and “not asking for them to provide it again”.
“Or we can initiate open banking when they get into our flow,” said Christy. “We want to reuse as much as what they've done upfront, so we're not redoing those processes.”
Simpology’s perspective
Gubbins described the experience working with AMP Bank as wonderful.
“The AMP team are very ambitious, which is awesome, and they're very committed to delivering a really, really great transformation to their own organisation, and of course, their network,” she said.
The bank had recognised that by using the Simpology platform and working together, it could achieve what it set out to do.
“They're really great to work with in the sense that they are taking risks and looking to really change things and to deliver an experience that we all sort of dream about,” Gubbins said.
Strengthening broker partnerships
Mortgage brokers are AMP Bank’s most important lending channel, with more than 90% of home loans originated via brokers.
Christy said the new loan system would help attract new brokers and retain existing brokers by providing them a much better experience.
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