NextGen welcomes mortgage veteran to leadership team

NextGen (formerly known as NextGen.Net) has confirmed it has expanded its leadership team, appointing Mike Ponsonby as its inaugural head of customer partnerships. 

Mr Ponsonby commenced his role in early January, now responsible for leading NextGen’s customer account executives as well as the fintech’s customer partnerships, reporting directly to chief customer officer Tony Carn.

He will also oversee NextGen’s portfolio of major banks, non-banks and broker groups. 

The fintech’s new head of partnerships first joined the company in 2018 as an account executive. 

Prior to this, Mr Ponsonby was the head of mortgages for ING Direct Australia from 2015 to 2016, and the head of product & service development for Westpac from 2013 to 2015, the latter seeing him be responsible for the home loan service and product development strategies for the major bank as well as its subsidiaries – St.George Bank, Bank of Melbourne and BankSA. 

Mr Ponsonby said of his appointment that it’s an incredibly exciting time for the fintech, and that this role is a great opportunity for him to “harness our market insights and work together with all of our customers”, equipping them with the latest technology to “make lending easy and create the best outcomes”.

As per NextGen, Mr Ponsonby’s appointment comes as the fintech aims to introduce open banking solutions through its digital platform, ApplyOnline. 

“Utilising open banking in the lending process can eliminate some major pain points for lenders, brokers and borrowers,” Mr Ponsonby added.

“This is the largest single change within our industry in many years and NextGen’s open banking solution will help deliver an even more efficient experience for our customers.”

Mr Carn said: “This year our goal is to continue our growth trajectory fuelled by exciting new product developments through open banking. 

“With a strong product background and a deep understanding of industry benchmarking and process optimisation, Mike will play a key role in servicing our volumes as well as supporting our customers as they increasingly digitise to achieve straight-through processing, which will include onboarding with open banking capabilities.”

[Related: ING rolls out digital lodgement platform for business loans]