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St George Bank has unveiled its new broker submission software yesterday, with brokers involved in the trial labelling it a 'game changer'.
St George Bank, in association with Mortgage Choice and NextGen.Net, has been trialling the new ApplyOnline Supporting Documents service with BankSA in South Australia for weeks.
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“The first broker to put a deal through using the process, and it was the first loan she’d put through BankSA, was glowing about it,” Clive Kirkpatrick, general manager of mortgage broking at St George told The Adviser.
“The technology allows brokers to scan their supporting documents and send them in with the application in one complete package,” he said.
“This means the lender can see everything they need to make a decision, which from a consumer perspective means a quicker turnaround time.”
South Australian franchisee of Mortgage Choice Noarlunga Fiona Manley told The Adviser she was very impressed with the service.
“We started using it about three weeks ago, and we found the whole process was exceptionally smooth.
“I think it’s a fantastic move forward for the entire industry once everyone gets onboard with this, which they will have to I think – it’s a real game changer. It helps us streamline our processes because everything is submitted only once, there’s no rework.” Ms Manly said.
The program runs on a checklist, allowing brokers to drag and drop digital copies of the supporting documents onto the list as they move through the application.
“The documents that are asked for in the checklist are specific to our situation, so it’s not a generic list. Some lenders have a maximum file size and you sometimes realise two days later that your email never sent because it was too large,” she said.
“In less than 24 hours, you hear back from the bank if there is anything amiss, but our assessor was in touch with us after about eight hours – and we’d accidently given them a rental ledger instead of a rental letter, but they quickly noticed the problem and more importantly, it was fixed on the same day.”
Ms Manley claimed that compared to previous deals she had submitted with BankSA, the loan was approved days ahead of what she had experienced before.
Mr Kirkpatrick said he was pleased with the results from the trial, and was looking forward to rolling it out to all brokers nationally.
“If a deal comes in to us through this channel, we can turn around a deal far quicker than if we have to end up asking for new supporting docs. It’s better for all parties involved… I think we have a real winner here,” he said.
