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An open baking portal has opened up to the broker channel, enabling them to access verified financial data for clients.
Open banking platform provider Frollo - part of the NextGen business - has rolled out to the broker channel a free new tool that gives brokers access to their clients’s financial data (when given permission by the client under the ‘trusted adviser’ model).
Frollo for Brokers aims to help accelerate the loan writing process and improve data security by removing the manual task of collecting financial and account statements from clients.
It does this by giving brokers real-time financial information provided from lenders through open banking’s Consumer Data Right (CDR).
It also harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) to categorise and analyse the financial data, enabling it to be automatically processed and interpreted to deliver actionable insights/
The tech provider also suggested the tool is more secure and reliable than screen scraping and accelerates the fact-finding process while improving customer experiences. According to the fintech, early adopters have reduced the loan writing process by hours by automating data collection and verification processes and reducing rework.
Client data can be accessed via the Frollo for Brokers online portal.
The launch expands out the Frollo technology to a wider audience. Around 25 per cent of brokers have been able to access this open banking technology through integrated aggregator partnerships.
Several aggregators - including Connective, Finsure and Mortgage Choice - have already integrated the open banking platform through NextGen Financial Passport. Unlike Frollo for Brokers, this tool embeds the open banking data directly into the ApplyOnline platform via the aggregator’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. This integrated version has been tailored by broker feedback from the aggregators.
In order to open access to the remaining 75 per cent of the broker market, Frollo for Brokers has been launched to provide brokers with the same core open banking product infrastructure (however, without CRM integration).
It is now available for free to all broker members of the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) and Finance Brokers Association of Australasia (FBAA).
Commenting on the launch on Wednesday (25 June), Renee Blethyn, head of broker partnerships at NextGen, said: “We are providing brokers with the choice to use Open Banking to deliver fast, safe and more transparent experiences for their clients.
“They no longer have to rely on screen scraping methods to access client account statements - an approach that’s becoming increasingly obsolete as banks phase it out over security and compliance risks.”
The move comes after NextGen released a repot showing that broker uptake of open banking was still low.
In a survey of 703 mortgage brokers for the Industry Insights Report, NextGen found that only 18 per cent of brokers had adopted the open banking features available through ApplyOnline.
According to NextGen, a key factor behind this low adoption was the continued reliance on legacy systems such as screen scraping and manual document uploads, with the majority of brokers (76 per cent) primarily relying on screen-scraping technologies, rather than open banking tools to gather information from their clients.
Indeed, 64 per cent of brokers said the main tool they used to gather financial information from clients was BankStatements (a screen-scraping tool created by illion).
Speaking on The Adviser’s In Focus podcast, Blethyn said that open banking adoption was increasing – revealing that NextGen had seen a 252 per cent increase in broker usage from November 2024 to April 2025 – and a 182 per cent uplift in customers completing the request to share their data with their broker so that the broker can use the information in their loan application.
“Particularly when it comes to things like pre approvals, we’re trying to take out those low-value interactions that are a bit annoying for a customer and make it easier for a broker to obtain that information so that when they’re reaching out to the customer, they’re having those real value-add conversations and they’re able to deliver more positive messaging rather than constantly having to ask for information that generally just drives everyone nuts,” Blethyn said.
You can find out more about how NextGen and Frollo are harnessing open banking for the broker channel in The Adviser’s In Focus podcast.
Listen to the episode ‘How broker feedback is shaping ApplyOnline’ with Renee Blethyn, sponsored by NextGen, here:
[Related: Open banking still not widely adopted by brokers: NextGen]
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