Even before the events of 2020 pandemic, Australian and New Zealand consumers were embracing banking on the go. A RFI global digital banking study shows that 73% of consumers are using a mobile app to do their banking, with a significant increase of 12% over the past two years. The uptake of mobile banking apps has risen dramatically across all demographics, bringing with it new vulnerabilities.

Sandstone Technology’s Chief Customer Officer, Ross Watts, explains why digital mortgages are no longer a desirable future state: they’re available now and becoming an essential tool in a bank's digital offering. For years, banks and other lenders have been describing their home loans as digital. But often that’s wishful thinking. What sits behind the scenes may be far from a true digital solution.

The value of a single, authoritative customer view is well established, and offers many advantages, from segmentation to risk reduction and customer retention. But as Sandstone Technology Chief Customer Officer Ross Watts, explains, there are three major hurdles to be overcome for incumbents.

Straight-through processing (STP), powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), isn’t just going to take the manual element out of loan applications. It’s going to help us turn open banking into an opportunity, it’s going to personalise customer interactions and shape banking strategy well into the future.

At a time when it’s easier to switch than ever before, single customer view is a powerful retention and capture tool in the fight for market share, according to Sandstone Technology Chief Customer Office Ross Watts. There are two main battlegrounds for banks generally, says Watts. The first is achieving ‘main financial institution’ status with a customer, meaning that the bank holds the customer’s main transaction account. And the second is the home loan.