Open banking could see borrowers refinancing their home loans in 15 minutes, according to one panellist at a recent fintech summit.
The event, held in Sydney on Tuesday (16 October), focused on how digital innovation was changing finance.
The program included speakers and panel discussions on topics such as challenger brands, neo-banking and open banking.
One panel session on challenger brands and neo-banks discussed the future of open banking.
Panellists included CEO of VOLT bank, Steve Weston, and chief marketing officer of Athena Home Loans, Natalie Dinsdale.
Athena Home Loans is still in a soft pilot phase, but Dinsdale said its “mission is to own home loans”.
Other panellists were co-CEO and co-founder of Judo Capital, David Hornery, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Xinja, Van Le, and founder and CEO of Douugh, Andy Taylor.
The group talked about how open banking might change the way they interact with customers.
VOLT’s Weston said the sharing of data could mean switching banks becomes a whole lot easier.
He also said their app would be able to display information such as a client’s home loan interest rate and assessing things like spending, income and other credit, will be able to inform them when they can get a cheaper rate.
Dinsdale said open banking was going to be “an evolution, not a revolution”, but that Athena hoped to be able to refinance mortgages within 15 minutes.
She added, “Data is going to become the new currency. For customers to share their data there has to be a trust. We’re very excited about it.
“As you mentioned for a customer to refinance it could take up to six weeks, even longer in some cases.
“We’re hoping to be able to refinance people within 15 minutes and open banking is going to be able to contribute to that. In terms of winners, it’s going to be consumers that are going to win.
“Only 5% of mortgages are refinances every year. What open banking is going to do is create more transparency so consumers have more choice.
“We’re going to be the first digital cloud based platform. The pace we can react to consumer feedback and find bugs will be tenfold compared to the banks.”
