Bank cuts loan processing times by 99%

At the bank’s investor day in Brisbane last week, the bank’s chief executive officer, David Carter, revealed that the decentralised banking platform, Ignite, had enabled the bank to drastically reduce the time taken to change some aspects of a customer’s home loan.

For example, the CEO suggested that the time taken to change a customer’s interest rate had reduced by around 99 per cent.

Mr Carter explained: “Following the success of our recent migration [to Ignite] of our Back to Basics loan portfolio, which is our second largest portfolio, we can now see benefits emerging that are creating value for our customers. By way of example, a customer who rings to change their interest rate can now do that in one call, maybe 10 to 20 minutes... Previously, they used to have to take the details down, send it off into the back office, maybe it took three days. The new experience is much better for our customers.”

The bank also told investors that it had reduced the time taken to change a customer’s home loan from up to three days, with one or two handoffs, to between one and 1.5 hours, with zero handoffs. This is due to the ability of the system to handle real-time processes at the first point of contact.

Similarly, customers are now able to redraw cash from their loan within 15 minutes (compared to three days).

Mr Carter went on to outline that the bank aims to provide a customer with a conditional home loan within three days, as of July 2017.

He explained: “We're going to make it easier for our customers to buy a home. We're going to do that by reducing the amount of time it takes to provide a customer a conditional home loan.

“Customers want to be at auctions on the weekend, they want to be able to go to open homes and have the comfort of knowing that they have a conditional home. We're going to reduce the time it takes to deliver a conditional home loan to 72 hours and then we're going to continue to drive that home.”

From next month, the bank also intends to have a “zero touch, digital motor claim service”, which will enable customers to “seamlessly and simply lodge a claim all of the way through to selecting the nearest assessment centre, the time and date that suits them and make that booking seamlessly and simply”.

Mr Carter concluded: “[N]o one falls in love with the home loan. No one falls in love with paying for insurance, but they fall in love with the home that it pays for and the home that it protects and our ability to be part of that journey earlier and to stay connected with that journey all the way through the life cycle is very, very exciting.”

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