Brokers, IT key to sustaining top performance
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A focus on brokers and boosting technical wizardry is set to propel Beyond Bank into the future during challenging times
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BEYOND BANK, one of Australia’s largest customer-
owned banks, is tackling the challenges of a changing economy by stepping up its broker support and investing
in technology.
“The key with our broker proposition is both people and systems,” says Darren McLeod, head of third party at
the bank.
“The numbers on Beyond Bank’s broker support team have increased by around 40% recently, and all these staff have an average of 10 years’ experience in mortgage lending.”
McLeod says the primary function of the support team is to work with the broker to best present the customer file
Beyond Bank is one of Australia’s largest customer-owned banks. It has been for and with its customers for over 60 years. It is 100% owned by its customers, so all profits are used to benefit customers through better rates, fairer fees, responsible lending, superior customer service and award-winning online banking.
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“Our people have an intimate knowledge of each file they are working on, which assists the broker, especially when it’s a complex file or has tight deadlines”
Darren McLeod,
Beyond Bank
before it goes to the credit team. This saves time and ensures the best possible outcome for both the broker and the customer.
Beyond Bank operates a file ownership model that allows the broker to deal with only one person at the bank from lodgement until settlement. This reduces the possibility of applications becoming orphans during the process and means that the support person is always fully up to date on any evolving details.
“Our people have an intimate knowledge of each file they are working on, which assists the broker, especially when it’s a complex file or has tight deadlines,” says McLeod.
A range of tech partnerships
Beyond Bank is also funnelling considerable resources into its technology through several tie-ups with leading firms in the fintech space.
“We have recently partnered with First Mortgage Services, which has given us eSign functionality for mortgage documents, and the ability to do FASTRefi for refinances and for brokers to use their dashboard for tracking the status of loan applications,” says McLeod.
Another key collaboration is with industry technology
partner NextGen for a new loan origination system.
The arrangement will enable the bank to provide a digital identity verification service using biometric technology and optical character recognition.
“[This] will accelerate the application process,” says McLeod.
“It will also move faster with the eSign functionality as it will allow customers to electronically sign their upfront forms and loan contracts from wherever they are, on whatever device they use.”
The partnership with NextGen will allow brokers to also run a comprehensive credit report on the customer and order property valuations up front through the CoreLogic PropertyHub or as part of the loan application.
Beyond Bank’s third key partnership is with Frollo. The bank has commenced a pilot program to run a Personal Financial Management platform application alongside its main banking platform as a part of the open banking initiative. The Beyond Bank+ app lets users see all their money in one place by connecting them with more than 400 financial institutions, giving them even more transparency and independence when it comes to their financial wellbeing.
This tool will have the following features:
Transaction categorisation
Account aggregation
Budgeting
Bill tracking
Goals & challenges
Savings goal performance
Spending behaviours
“We are not going to rest on our laurels”
Darren McLeod,
Beyond Bank
McLeod says Beyond Bank’s various partnerships are essential to its approach to the many challenges presented by the pandemic and its aftermath, including a period of rising interest rates that many newer brokers will be encountering for the first time.
The pandemic sparked technological revolutions in a range of industries. It’s increasingly important to realise latent efficiencies not only to support the bottom line but also as
customer and broker expectations around work and applying for remote loans become the norm.
The lending industry is no exception, and time is of the essence.
“We will be rolling out all of these new processes and systems over the next six to 12 months,”
says McLeod.
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Beyond Bank
Australia’s five best banks in 2022
Source: Forbes 2022 World’s Best Banks survey
1
2
Heritage Bank
3
Greater Bank
4
Newcastle Permanent Building Society
5
Bendigo Bank
Beyond Bank, as an accredited data recipient, partnered with Frollo because the fintech provides a proven end-to-end technical solution for a wide range of open banking uses.
The initiative is expected to increase customer savings by 11% in the first three months, reduce personal loan debts by almost 25% and improve credit card debt by 13% over six months.
Beyond Bank will conduct a review at the conclusion of the pilot expected later this year.
290,000
Number of customers at Beyond Bank
Source: Beyond Bank
Highly rated
Beyond Bank has a strong track record when it comes to technological innovation, having won eight consecutive Canstar awards.
This year Canstar combined its Online and Mobile Banking awards into a single category that captures an institution's complete digital service offering, inclusive of desktop and mobile functionality. Beyond Bank topped 43 customer-
owned organisations to win the award and continues to evolve the level of features and the transactional-ability features it offers, including in desktop and mobile banking. An emphasis on the user experience across digital channels helps keep the customer at the centre of technological advancements.
Beyond Bank was also ranked best bank in Australia in the Forbes 2022 World’s Best Banks survey after being rated by customers on general satisfaction and key metrics such as trust, fees, digital services and financial advice.
McLeod knows that consistently outperforming the competition in this manner takes ongoing commitment.
“We are not going to rest on our laurels,” he says.
“Combining the right people with the most effective processes and systems will enable us to provide a level of service to our brokers and their customers [that ensures] the best outcome for their financial needs.”
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Transaction categorisation
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Spending behaviours
Copyright © 1996-2022 Key Media, Inc.
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Copyright © 1996-2022 Key Media, Inc.
Companies
People
Newsletter
About us
Authors
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Conditions of Use
Contact Us
RSS
News
MORTGAGE INDUSTRY
BEST IN MORTGAGE
SPECIALTY
TV
Resources
US
CA
AU
NZ
UK