Non-major bank Suncorp has revealed that its integrated banking platform has resulted in faster loan-related processes for customers.
Speaking at the bank’s 2017 Investor Day in Brisbane yesterday (1 June), David Carter, chief executive officer of banking and wealth, discussed how Suncorp was making it easier for customers by reducing pain points in current lending processes.
The core banking platform, called Ignite, has brought in added efficiencies for mortgage holders. This includes letting individuals change their loan type in 60 to 90 minutes as opposed to the original two to three day process.
Likewise, a borrower can change their interest rates within a 10 to 20 minute phone call instead of several days.
“We’re continuing to make it easier for our customers,” Carter said. “Following the success of our recent migration 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.”
Suncorp has spent time with customers and brokers, using feedback to make changes to the bank’s processes as a result, he added, with credit quality a top priority.
“We continue to focus on lending that has strong credit attributes. Relative to market, we are overweight owner occupier principal & interest repayment loans and have next to no exposure to foreign borrowers.”
The bank’s interest only portfolio sits at around 25% versus APRA’s cap of 30% while growth in the investor portfolio lies around 7%, he added.
“Depending on how you measure it, 80% of our customers are at least one month ahead of their repayments. Seventy per cent are three months ahead.”
Mark Reinke, chief customer experience officer, also spoke at the event and revealed plans to make it easier for customers to buy a home by reducing the approval time for conditional home loans.
“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 the conditional loan. 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 hard.”
This initiative will be launched by Suncorp next month, Reinke said.
“There are currently a number of factors that influence turnaround times, and reducing them to 72 hours will provide real value to our customers, and broker partners,” a Suncorp spokesperson told
Australian Broker.
“The new process will roll out progressively across certain loan products in the coming months and will be available to our broker and direct channels. We know that turnaround times are a key issue for brokers, and our investment in this area is going to help them deliver greater consistency, certainty and service to their customers.”
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