Future focus: What opportunities do the mutuals foresee?

Bank Australia

Customer-focused technology upgrades

Technology is a big focus for us this year. We’ve now soft-launched a new lending origination platform and that will go into a full launch by the end of September, which will be a big change for us. It’s been two years in the making and it isn’t off the shelf we built it ourselves with Cloudcase. The origination platform will offer brokers a better experience and a simpler user experience online for our customers and prospective customers.

Beyond Bank

Investment focus, enhanced technology

We have a current focus on the investment lending space where we think there is some good opportunity there. We’re looking at how we can improve our servicing capability with negative gearing, for example.

Technology is an area we’ve had to spend a lot of time and effort on – loan processing and turnaround times in particular. Having recently implemented a new origination platform, even when we see a spike in applications, we can maintain a pretty consistent and competitive service level. We have a really good partnership with FMS for FastRefi and can do an external refinance within days now, so these key partnerships have been really important.

We’re just about to launch a new broker website and calculator and we’ve partnered with Elula to assist us with retention and identifying which customers might be at risk of refinancing away.

It’s taking all the stress points out of all the transactions to make it a quicker time to a yes and a better, easier experience for the broker and the customer.

Gateway Bank

Expanding our LVR space

There’s been a lot of competition in the lower LVR space, but by the end of this year, we’ll be back in the higher LVR space. We think the time is right to be back in that space. Some of the concerns that were had earlier in the year have settled a little bit now and it’s time to start helping people with lower deposits and higher barriers to entry into market get over the line.

We went live with a new origination system a few years back, and so it’s now a constant iterative change with what we do in that space to continue improving our broker and member experiences.

We are also tweaking our processes and our policies in response to broker feedback so we can provide better service and help with niche opportunities.

Great Southern Bank

Diverse homeownership pathways

We’re looking at the other pathways to opening that door to first home ownership, whether it be through our partnership with Helia … or how we help inform customers about some of the other pathways that we may not necessarily participate too strongly in, like the Bank of Mum and Dad and other government initiatives such as shared equity schemes (though governments don’t make it easy to play in that space!).

First-time buyers are going to be crucial for us going forward. However, we can’t throw all our eggs in that first home buyer basket. So we’ve made some fundamental changes to our investor proposition, and now we’ve got a really good, strong foothold in the investor segment and that’s helping us diversify.

We’re also looking at a green home offer. While we have a green personal loan out in the market currently, the green home offer will come out this financial year.

People First Bank

A unified banking experience

As we build our new bank, we’re leveraging our combined strengths: Heritage Bank’s prominence in Queensland and NSW, coupled with People’s Choice’s strong footprint in South Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory, provides a solid foundation for national growth.

We’re working closely with partners like Salesforce to simplify the entire lending journey, from applications to the complete lifecycle of loans. By focusing on simplicity and creating one seamless way of doing things, we’re ensuring both brokers and customers benefit from a unified, streamlined experience.

Our aim is to set a new standard for customer experience and drive consistency across all touchpoints – including brokers.

Teachers Mutual Bank

Transformative growth

We’ve been flat out from some of the growth that we’ve seen and needed to manage, especially in the first home buyer space. Pleasingly, we’ve managed this and we’re back in there again with a home buying scheme. There’s also more opportunity for us in refinancing and investment.

Our CEO has a great vision and we’ll continue to support the broker channel going forward. He has a strong broker background. We have introduced a new role of chief customer officer to help us focus our product portfolio on the needs of our customers. So we have a transformation going on inside the organisation, which is really exciting.

That will transform our products, our business and our technology to make it even better for our brokers, and we’ll continue to do so. So, watch this space!