Open banking opens the door for conversation trigger points: NextGen

In October last year, the government made changes to the CDR rules that enabled consumers to use the CDR to share their data with “trusted advisers” in order to receive advice or a service.

According to Ms Blethyn, the CDR rules changes could help brokers identify behavioural changes and proactively propose possible solutions and guidance for the consumer based on the information made available.

Explaining how this would work, Ms Blethyn said that brokers who are granted access as a trusted adviser could see consumers’ spending habits and behaviours in real time and potentially “help guide them to make better choices or choices they wouldn’t have made before”.

The broker could then put forward budgeting tips or loan solutions to the client, based on the information that has been made available to them.

Ms Blethyn added that CDR could potentially transform a lot of the “pain points and tension points” that brokers face and reduce the time spent on activities that don’t actually allow brokers to service and serve their customers.

This, in turn, would help “people will get access to money faster, they’ll be able to do things quicker and focus more on the things they want to do” without being “tied up so much in the pain points”, she said.

As well as offering the opportunity for brokers to offer proactive credit support, Ms Blethyn said she was “really [excited]” about the range of data points that are being made available through open banking, which she said would “totally change the existing customer review process”.

“We are able to actually capture a full picture based on the data holder (i.e. the lenders) sharing the information,” Ms Blethyn said.

“The data that they’re having to share (at the consumer’s request) that goes to a broker gives full oversight of interest rate, loan repayment type, term remaining, all of the things that a broker sometimes finds really hard to obtain when they’re doing an existing customer pricing retention.”

NextGen’s head of broker partnerships said that this “creates such a win” for brokers, allowing them to make informed, proactive and meaningful calls and follow-ups when brokers are reviewing a customer, instead of “going through the pain point of filling in a form to go to a lender to get the information you need.

“In terms of future state, I’m particularly excited about that, even though it’s possibly one of those more mundane things,” Ms Blethyn concluded. 

“What we’re all trying to do is be better for customers.”

[Related: Opening Up]