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More than 700 brokers responded to NextGen’s inaugural Industry Insights Report conducted by Agile Market Intelligence. But what were the main takeaways? We sit down with Renee Blethyn, head of broker partnerships at NextGen, to discuss how broker feedback is being incorporated in the evolution of ApplyOnline® and discover what’s next for open banking
Q. What prompted you to launch the Industry Insights Report ?
What we wanted to do was better understand how we’re perceived in the industry. We wanted to know how our products are used [and] how we can improve and deliver a better experience. And that’s across lenders, mortgage broker groups, and mortgage brokers and their teams.
[ApplyOnline] is something we’re really proud of. We’re an Australian business and what we provide is the dominant lending platform in the industry. We have over 60 lenders who partner with us and provide access to their products via our platform.
Our customers are both lenders and mortgage broker groups, [so we] incorporate products and services within that experience to try and make that as streamlined as posible.
Q. What were some of the key findings?
What we saw with our survey is [our audience] trusts our platform [but also] has some really clear feedback on things they would love to see us improve to make their lives easier and enable them to deliver a better experience to their customers.
In terms of adoption rates, 94 per cent of brokers use ApplyOnline every single month. We [saw] an extremely high level of engagement and what was important for us was that the audience that answered the survey were actually utilising our platform.
What was even more compelling for us was that, of the users currently using our platform, 84 per cent were using what we call our quality tools: NextGenID, Access Seeker and eSign. Those tools are what some of our lender partners have chosen to integrate into their solution, which streamlines the process and enables a high quality of applications.
To see that there’s that real alignment of usage with our platform was really encouraging.
Q. What changes have you implemented based on the feedback?
[We were] able to tweak some of the changes we’d already planned to make, specifically to the new user interface (UI) – when it comes to the way brokers enter living expenses, for example. We were able to use verbatim feedback to improve that.
We had some key areas that brokers gave us feedback on in terms of improving the system speed and reliability, the ability for brokers to be able to override validation errors or fields, and being able to see it more clearly.
All of that feedback has been shared with our teams and we’re in the process of making changes to as much of it as we can. We obviously can’t do everything, and part of it does need to align with how we see the platform working in the future. But what we’re able to do with these verbatim comments is share exactly the language that brokers use and that gives [the team] a real picture as to what [brokers] need as a user of our platform.
Looking at CRM integration, we heard loud and clear from brokers that reducing the data entry duplication is primarily important.. there’s a cost [in terms of] the time that it takes in re-entering data that you’ve already entered, so that’s something that we’re working on directly with broker groups.
Q. What other key insights did you take from the survey?
It was really interesting to see that there was quite a low level of awareness when it comes to the training that we offer, because we do offer it every single month. We offer free sessions and have quite a structured programme. We also have a team of customer success managers that are really passionate about delivering this training in a way that helps our users.
Despite the fact that 94 per cent of those that completed the survey use our platform, only 28 per cent had actually participated in the training. So, there’s a great gap for us to fill there.
There is a combination of different things we’re doing to enable that. The most exciting thing we’ve done is redevelop our website to make the education and training area more visible, easier to access, and easier to register and see what’s available.
We run monthly webinars. We’ve done an introduction video about our customer success team, so you can see who’s actually running the training. We’re also running regulator promotions – so, we’ve tried to raise awareness directly with brokers in the industry.
Q. What do you expect to happen next in open banking?
We’re absolutely in that transition phase. But what we’re finding is – and particularly with consumers being a lot more aware around where their data is stored and sharing their data – [consumers are] actually feeling a lot more comfortable in choosing an option where they don’t have to provide their internet banking login details, for example.
Why that’s helping brokers is [that] not only are they able to offer a safe option [and] they’re able to do that in a quicker way and really provide and keep that trusted relationship that they’ve built with the client.
Tune in to hear more!
Find out more about the insights gleaned from NextGen’s broker survey in the In Focus podcast episode, ‘How broker feedback is shaping ApplyOnline®’ here:
Click here to listen on your device
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