About
In Australia ~70% of residential mortgage lending is facilitated via a broker. As a bank that’s been committed to broker channel since the very beginning, we understand the critical role that brokers play in supporting Australian homeowners. In addition, Bankwest are committed to safe and seamless customer experiences but there are a number of ways in which a customer’s home loan application can be impacted in the process of brokers sharing ‘supporting documents’ with banks – not just Bankwest. DocBox is a single, secure location within our authenticated Broker Portal, for brokers to share customer’s supporting documents. Using AI technology and machine learning these documents are automatically scanned, checked, and indexed before being instantly attached to a customer’s application. Brokers themselves have described DocBox as “a game changer” and have attested to how much time and effort it’s saving them and their customers every day.
Innovation presentation
SETTING THE CONTEXT:
In Australia ~70% of residential mortgage lending is facilitated via a broker. Bankwest understand the critical role that brokers play in supporting Australian homeowners more than many other lenders in the market, with over 80% of our home loan customers being introduced to Bankwest via a broker.
Our ambition is to be the best broker bank in Australia – and a digital disruptor for customers who choose a broker.
Over the last 18months we’ve undergone a transformation in our business strategy, recognising the role that brokers play in the consumers home lending needs, we’ve shifted to delivering new ‘broker first’ technology within our digital offering. Empowering brokers with value-added tools and services that give them confidence and the capability to recommend a customer to Bankwest for life.
THE PROBLEM:
There are a number of ways in which a customer’s home loan application can very easily be impacted, slowed, or stopped in the process of brokers sharing ‘supporting documents’ with banks.
1) Risk of cyber-attacks: some brokers still send sensitive and personal customer information to Bankwest via email. With or without proper encryption, this puts the brokers business and the customer at risk of a malicious cyber-attack.
2) Old technology: there are other Third Party programs in the market that brokers have access to, which seem to offer a safe and secure document transfer solution. Some lenders enforce that brokers use Third Party softwares, like “ApplyOnline” (AOL), to submit supporting documents, but our qualitative research showed that the softwares currently available are not meeting the needs of brokers:
- the software is out of date and the UX does not offer an intuitive digital experience i.e., brokers can only upload one document at a time,
- documents get lost or go missing at random during upload and transfer to the lender – and brokers have no record of their upload history,
- files are flattened/compressed when transferred limiting a lenders ability to apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR) or Machine Learning capabilities on files,
- the documents still require a “pre-assessment” check by bank colleagues to ensure that the documents supplied were correct i.e. file named ‘payslip’ is in fact the customers ‘payslip’.
Trish from Leading Edge Finance in Perth, WA said “Other lenders require us to complete the documents tab on AOL. This can take a while to upload and verify.”
Whilst Jigar from Green Finance Hub in Western Sydney described “the excuse” this software offers lenders without a recorded ‘Submission History’; “ApplyOnline is a Third Party channel and there is a very easy excuse of the documents being ‘not received’ at the other end even though they are loaded on.”
3) Brokers are busy: with most retail lending on their shoulders in Australia they don’t have the time to troubleshoot issues on every loan application. It’s normal that they may miss or forget something but being informed after the fact feels like time wasted in re-upload or waiting for a “pre-assessment” check. They want a tool that guides them get it right the first time, so that their customers application gets into the hands of the bank’s assessment team. This will enable brokers to deliver confidence to their customers as quickly as possible so that they have the money to secure their dream home.
“Other lenders require an email – then they need to apply the docs – then if something goes missing and you don’t know it’s gone missing you get hit with another MIR. Which wastes more time and creates more delays and a poor client experience.” – Julian, Finch Financial
OUR SOLUTION: DocBox
1) Safe & secure: A single, authenticated online location for brokers to share their customers supporting documents with Bankwest – for pre-approval, unconditional and any missing information for any new lending. Unlike many other solutions, the meta data on the documents is not modified upon receipt enabling those documents to be reviewed for potential fraud attempts thanks to our Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and our machine learning capabilities.
2) Fast and frictionless: The tool allows brokers to upload all documents relating to a customer’s application in one centralised location, and automatically performs the below functions, making the need for a physical ‘pre-assessment’ check almost obsolete:
o drag & drop all documents at once,
o automatically have individual documents categorised according to the bank’s application requirements,
o documents to be scanned by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and text extracts to improve automatic categorisation accuracy,
o instantly have supporting documents uploaded to the Bankwest customer application to enable an assessor and a broker to share information real time while further reduce turnaround time,
o display the document ID number to the broker for ease of reference when talking to the Bankwest case assessor,
o be notified of any errors (file type or size) before submitting and given the opportunity to correct them,
o OCR and Machine Learning capabilities are also used upon submission to drive automatic verification of certain non-negotiable information required to provide a decision to a broker customer such as identification and/or privacy forms for example OCR is again used after submission on Bankwest identification forms to ensure they are completed correctly,
o "soft gate" notifications for certain docs; allowing brokers to upload if they have it without the application being stopped.
3) Built for brokers: After interviewing brokers and our Business Development Managers to understand their issues surrounding ‘supporting documents’ – we knew a bespoke solution would be the only way to address all the audience concerns and support to fast track their customers application. We recently extended the functionality of DocBox to a broker support staff, providing them safe and secure access to upload supporting documents on behalf of the broker.
How brokers feel about our DocBox solution:
“Using DocBox has saved days in the approval process for our clients – faster approvals = faster settlements = happier clients.” – Julian, Finch Financial
“I love the AI smarts that automatically categorise the items.” – Trish, Lending Edge Finance
“Uploading documents through DocBox is instant as compared to sending documents through mailbox. It saves time and the processor can use the missing items if needed straight away without putting the file back in the queue.” – Jigar, Green Finance Hub
Uniqueness of the project
WHY IS THIS SOLUTION UNIQUE?
Because at Bankwest we do things differently to other lenders.
We take a research-based approach to every technical change or improvement we make for our brokers. We conduct qualitative research for brokers to provide feedback on their experiences, we work with our state-based BDM teams to identify and assign willing brokers as pilot testers, all to ensure that the changes we make will have the biggest impact on streamlining a broker’s job and day-to-day portfolio management.
There are ~18,000 brokers in Australia, and the ‘supporting docs’ problem was not unique to us. There were industry gripes about this step of the application process, and we considered many options to resolve this for. We could have adopted other industry programs such as Apply Online (AOL), which other lenders in our market subscribe to or we could have remained using only email.
So, we took it upon ourselves to understand fully how brokers felt about the existing experience, with us and other lenders, and ultimately developed a bespoke built solution that met their needs.
- It’s built into our authenticated Bankwest Broker Portal,
- DocBox leverages AI and machine learning to automatically categorise documents aligned to our requirements, further enabling a one-touch outcome,
- Documents uploaded via DocBox are attached instantly to the customers application held within our Common Processing System (CPS),
- Soft gates are implemented to notify brokers of potential missed or missing documents for the customer application instantly upon upload, to avoid applications being stopped,
- Full document submission history is held within DocBox.
We launched the Phase 1 pilot in March 2022 with a small group of brokers, we then added seven new features to the tool based directly on user feedback. Launching Phase 2 pilot of DocBox at the end of June 2022, to around pilot users in total, before rolling out to the whole market in September.
DocBox doesn’t just solve the problem, it makes the whole process less complex and simpler for brokers every day.
Brokers have also let us know that they feel the solution we’ve developed is best in market:
“Experience through DocBox is the best amongst any other lender.” – Jigar, Green Finance Hub.
“This is a game changer and gives the broker complete control!” – Julian, Finch Financial
To the best of our knowledge there is no other bespoke document upload solution in the Australian market built for brokers, within an authenticated Portal that leverages AI automation, machine learning that’s integrated with their core banking system.
