Simon Bednar is CEO of Finsure, one of Australia’s largest mortgage aggregation groups, with over 2,500 brokers nationally. The group settles over $45B in mortgages each year and manages a portfolio of $88bn.
In partnership with NextGen and Frollo, Finsure provides its brokers with Open Banking-powered financial snapshots of their customers to streamline the mortgage application process. This allows its brokers to deliver a marketing-leading service to their customers.
By consuming Open Banking data, we can provide unique insights into customer behaviour, assisting brokers to make the right decisions.
Simon Bednar (Finsure)
What problem does Open Banking solve for Finsure?
Open Banking solves the problem of data inconsistency and provides transparency across the entire applicant lifecycle. It allows Finsure to build into our CRM platform comprehensive data insight models, which will help brokers make more informed decisions.
It also allows all parties in the transaction to rely on the same data set, greatly reducing rework and facilitating earlier decisions in the home loan process. By consuming Open Banking data, we can provide unique insights into customer behaviour, assisting brokers in making the right decisions.
As the first mortgage broker group to launch with Open Banking, you’re an early adopter. What drove this?
Finsure has always prided itself on being an innovator in both technology and process. The idea that we could build upon our existing proprietary solution to provide further efficiencies to our members was extremely attractive.
Furthermore, at Finsure, we use data extensively to provide insights into customer and broker behaviour. By harnessing the data that Open Banking delivers, Finsure can further innovate in this growth area with the ultimate goal of providing brokers with predictive data models., giving them a huge advantage in a highly competitive environment.
In 5 years’ time, Open Banking should be providing brokers with the complete financial data set for their customers […] and determining the ideal outcome under best interest duty.
Simon Bednar (Finsure)
Based on your experience to date, what advice would you give other businesses that want to use Open Banking data?
While Open Banking seems like a silver bullet, it requires a company to really understand how they want to use the available dataset; they must identify how they will use the data, how the data enhances their service offering and how they can deliver innovation to the customers through their services and solutions.
Understanding this will help a business determine how best to use and ultimately leverage the Open Banking data set.
What would you like Open Banking to do for your brokers in 5 years’ time?
Ideally, in 5 years’ time, Open Banking should be providing brokers with the complete financial data set for their customers, supporting their own processes when interviewing customers and determining the ideal outcome under best interest duty.
The technology isn’t there yet, with gaps across different institutions, so while it provides some insights today, there is still a long way to go. However, the rapid technological revolution our industry has undergone in the last 24 months highlights that it’s well within our grasp.
This interview is part of ‘The State of Open Banking 2023′, an industry report by Open Banking provider Frollo. The report provides a pulse check of the Australian Open Banking industry, an overview of exciting new use cases and interviews with experts.
