AMP rolls out fast refinancing solution for brokers

FASTRefi is provided by First American Title Insurance Company of Australia Pty Limited, trading as First Title — an Australian general insurance company authorised by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

In essence, FASTRefi gives customers, brokers, and advisers “an easier process and faster access to funds”, speeding up the time from unconditional approval to settlement, partnering with FMS/First Title to deliver the “streamlined experience”, AMP explained.

Broker feedback has been instrumental in ushering in the adoption of the technology, launched on Thursday (2 March), the bank confirmed.

It has been spurred on by the rapidly rising rate environment and competition in the refinancing space.

AMP Bank head of lending operations and client assist, Melissa Christy, commented: “By driving digitisation and automation, we’re able to better support brokers and improve the lending experience.

“FASTRefi makes refinancing to AMP Bank faster and simpler, allowing settlement to take place within a few days of unconditional approval, giving customers greater certainty.

“In a strong refinance market, it’s important we have the right technology in place to support our brokers and deliver for customers.

“AMP Bank continues to focus on embedding a digital-first service experience for customers and brokers and delivering ongoing improvements in the lending origination experience.”

According to the bank, the First Title enhanced-FASTRefi pilot delivered a faster ‘time to settlement’ through a “20 per cent increase in one-touch verifications” and “reduc[ed] the time to funding by a third” to three days, once customers’ documents have been returned.

The non-major bank said that the addition of FASTRefi to AMP’s lending origination technology “forms part of the bank’s continued investment in home loan processing technology” and its “commitment to delivering a strong service experience across its channels.”

Continuing changes and faster paces

AMP Bank has introduced a number of enhancements to its mortgage process in the past year, including digital signatures (eSign) for loan applications and digital verification of identity (VOI) tools, which “makes it easier to submit applications” to AMP Bank, and “saves brokers and advisers time”, while supporting “faster turnarounds”.

The bank added that the improvements “reflect feedback from brokers and advisers” and support AMP Bank’s strategic objectives “to enhance self-serve capability” and “increasingly digitise and automate the lending experience” across its channels.

More tools added to the fold

Additionally, AMP this year has also delivered the first phase of its enhancements to top-ups in ApplyOnline. This gives “a faster time to approval, improved efficiency in how deals are managed and assessed through workload management tool ‘Get Next’”, it stated.

It also established a new AMP-dedicated FMS phone line for brokers, providing a better service experience for brokers, the bank confirmed. 

Overall since 2022, AMP confirmed its average customer cycle time to unconditional approval has improved by 33 per cent. 

Broker input enhancing lender capabilities

The AMP digital tweaks continue a trend of app and portal improvement driven by the needs of the third-party broker channel.

Only recently did the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) tweak its broker portal to help ‘arm brokers’ as fixed rate ‘mortgage cliffs’ approach, the major bank explained.

Part of the CBA’s CommBroker facility, the new Your Loans tool was designed and refined via broker feedback to give the bank’s broker partners “greater visibility over their portfolios”, it explained.

National Australia Bank (NAB) has also used broker input to fine-tune its lending experience.

NAB announced on Monday (27 February) that it had ‘enhanced’ its instant pricing tool (IPT) to enable automated processing of interest rate changes directly into customer accounts.

This capability will mean that brokers “guiding customers” to secure the best interest rate on their existing NAB home loan will be able to “instantly lock in savings” for their customers following the successful roll-out of straight-through processing (STP) via the NAB instant pricing tool.

[Related: Refinancing hits ‘all-time high’ in November: ABS]