While customer-owned financial institutions in Australia are a boon, undergoing digital transformation on tight resources requires prudent strategizing

As one of Australia’s largest customer-owned financial institutions, Beyond Bank delivers banking, lending, and insurance services to 305,000 members.

On 11 November 2024 the bank announced a digitalization program for its loan fulfilment operations: centralizing data to maximize value and accelerate delivery of its financial services for consumers and businesses.

The program involves using an external Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) that will connect the bank’s loan fulfilment systems through a hub-and-spoke model, including its customer relationship management, lending platform, and core banking applications. In addition, application programming interfaces will be deployed to automate data retrieval across the connected environment. Finally, the centralization ensures that critical reporting data accurately flows to relevant governance and business intelligence systems.

Back in August 2024, Beyond Bank had already used part of the framework to digitalize and streamline personal loans, credit cards, and overdrafts — modernizing the home loan process and introducing e-signing capabilities. The iPaaS platform has been helping the bank to trim 35 points of manual data entry and iron out previously cumbersome data duplications.

Said the bank’s Senior Manager for Loan Fulfillment, Wendy Den Hartog: “We sought to establish a coordinated view of the business by connecting our many back-end systems. In doing so, we’ve built a framework that securely houses our data, and ensures no leakage of its value. The productivity gains are dramatic: we have earned back 14 full working days per month. This means my team isn’t swamped by administrative duties, and can tackle strategic initiatives. The benefits also directly extend to our customers: the time needed to fill out a new loan, credit card, or overdraft application has been drastically reduced. Plus, we’re delivering tailored services more quickly.”

According to David Irecki, Chief Technology Officer (APJ), Boomi, the iPaaS platform involved: “By coordinating its data, Beyond Bank has assembled a sturdy digital pathway in how customers gain access to finance options. The process is more user-friendly and has dramatically reduced data errors, speeding the internal process from lodgement to funding.”