“Teachers Mutual Bank (TMB) has broken the mould,” declared Director of Sales at
NextGen.Net, Tony Carn.
This month’s launch of TMB’s streamlined, all-in-one electronic lodgement and loan processing system can take the mutual sector to another level.
“By adopting ApplyOnline as its loan origination platform, a gold-plated solution for both electronic lodgement and workflow, TMB has become a pioneer in the mutual space,” Carn said. Traditionally financial institutions have viewed electronic lodgement tools and loan processing platforms as two separate entities.
TMB has now blown that outdated concept completely out of the water by showing the mutual sector how it’s done. TMB has upgraded the ApplyOnline electronic lodgement service and introduced online servicing calculations, Supporting Documents, mortgage processing and assessment as part of the one system.
“The way forward is to process everything within the application because that allows you to do things quicker, cheaper and more accurately. It’s the future,” Carn said.
NextGen.Net has provided a cohesive, seamless, economical solution for TMB from point of sale through to loan settlement. “What that means for us is no more double handling,” said Theresa Mason, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at TMB. “From a broker’s perspective, a submission no longer has to go through the hands of a credit assessor on our side to enter the information. It now goes straight through our system and the assessment process.”
TMB has been with NextGen.Net since it entered the broker market. A focus on growth led them to upgrade and adopt ApplyOnline as the loan origination platform. “In terms of growing greater capacity there’s obviously a related cost if you need to devote more man hours,” Mason said. “So we made the system more efficient to enable us to take on extra capacity and still maintain the excellent service level promise we’ve made to brokers.” Mason, who has over 25 years’ experience in the mutual financial sector, said TMB’s ultimate goal is to achieve “a fully integrated system”. This, she said, “is the next step in our evolution of servicing the broker market”. Previously TMB engaged in manual intervention to transfer applications from one system to another. “That was expensive and inefficient for everyone,” Mason said. “So we worked with NextGen.Net to develop our system so we could get the application straight in; and at the same time, develop our assessment processing capabilities so the system was more intelligent in terms of being able to house the deal. That means in terms of all the supporting documents plus all the decisions that sit around that.” Carn applauds TMB’s pioneering spirit: explaining that in essence they have combined electronic lodgement and processing in one system, leveraging the fact that there is no hand off/integration into another processing system.
“The challenge for us has always been how to service our members right across Australia when we’re not investing in a high-street footprint,” Mason said. “Working with brokers was a natural choice. “I view brokers as ‘a core competency’ due to their combination of pooled knowledge and technical capacities; and our ambition has been to make sure we provide sophisticated accessibility through our broker channel for purchasing home loans.”
