Bendigo embraces fintech to offer instant home loans
In its bid to improve its services for potential mortgage clients, Bendigo Bank has partnered with fintech provider Tic:Toc to offer instant home loans starting early next year. The partnership enables Bendigo to utilize Tic:Toc’s platform in offering an automated assessment on home-loan applications. The bank was the first Australian lender to offer a digital home-loan application and assessment process under its own brand. Tic:Toc first launched the platform in July 2017, offering a streamlined digital fulfilment process. Tic:Toc founder and CEO Anthony Baum said the platform promises to cut expenses needed to process and deliver home-loan applications, resulting in cost efficiencies on the side of the lenders. “There’s actually […]
Xinja live with SAP Cloud for banking
Xinja today announced that it is live on SAP Cloud for Banking, after a rapid three-month implementation. While this is a global first for SAP, it also allows Xinja to accelerate development of innovative solutions for customers to make banking as easy and engaging as possible. Xinja has implemented SAP Cloud for Banking which comprises: SAP S/4HANA Finance; SAP Banking (Loans and Deposits), SAP Payments Engine, running on SAP Cloud and managed by SAP Cloud Application Services. SAP Cloud for Banking is an easy to configure, open platform, that is agile, collaborative and simple to integrate. It allows for rapid innovation cycles and leverages the power of SAP HANA to […]
Xinja appoints Tesla Senior Engineer Thomas Vikstrom to Board
Xinja, which is building an independent, Australian, 100% digital ‘neobank’, today announced that Tesla senior engineer, Thomas Vikstrom, has been appointed to the Xinja Board. Mr. Vikstrom is an engineer with nearly 20 years of experience leading product development and engineering programs at Tesla, Ford, Noble Metal Processing and SSAB HardTech, Inc. Vikstrom is currently a senior engineer at Tesla where he has worked for nine years, helping to develop and introduce Tesla products. “Banking, like automotive in the past, is an industry ripe for change,” Mr. Vikstrom said. “I’ll be looking beyond what is, and imagining what could be, enabling Xinja to disrupt banking and improve the lives of […]
Eftpos gets Square as battle for mobile payments escalates
Mobile tradies and small businesses seeking to bypass steep credit card fees extracted by bank-owned payments terminals have scored a significant victory, with challenger payments provider Square revealing it has now ported eftpos functionality to its Australian machines. Made official on Monday, the tie-up between Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s global payments play Australia’s 30-something electronic payments scheme opens the door for millions of people holding everyday bank payment cards fitted with contactless functionality to avoid the dreaded Amex. While it might seem like an incremental retrofit, the realpolitik of the eftpos-Squarer hook-up is actually way bigger. It means an untapped army of smaller merchants – think dog washers, craft brewers, […]
How the open banking API could transform financial services to benefit consumers
Until recently, the idea of waiting a day or two for a bank transfer to reach your account was normal, however consumers are starting to demand immediate and seamless payment alternatives. With upcoming developments in the Australian financial services sector, we should start to see these demands met – if not by banks, then by FinTech firms aiming to transform the financial services industry. Twelve months after the government announced the introduction of a Consumer Data Right (CDR) in Australia, Data61 has released a working draft of the standards that will underpin it. The CDR will offer Australians control over the data held about them by service providers, and the […]
Would you bank with Google, Amazon, Facebook or Apple?
Soon, going into a bank branch to speak to the manager about getting a loan will be as outdated as driving to Blockbuster to rent a VHS cassette. Banking in Australia will increasingly be digitised over the coming years, as neo-banking looks set to disrupt Australia’s financial industry. What’s a neo-bank? Neo-banks are digital-only banks that don’t have physical branches or rely on legacy operating systems; in other words, they’re not just the digital front of a traditional bank. There are smaller local neo-banks emerging, but the ones that are poised to make the most impact are the big tech behemoths Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon (GAFA). But will neo-banking be […]
Banks must reshape to survive compliance and technology crunches
KPMG and EY highlight Australia’s big four banks must balance ongoing compliance costs with continued spending in technology or face being left behind when it comes to innovation. In their post FY18 analysis of Australian bank results, KPMG and EY point to several compliance and technology headwinds facing the sector and suggest cost discipline will be a major focus. It means more restructures and simplifications. KPMG partner, banking strategy, Hessel Verbeek said not only have various compliance and remediation costs translated into higher cost-to-income ratios, “the majors’ investment spend in risk and compliance projects is also up strongly and in most cases investments on growth initiatives has decreased in a […]
Regulation alone won’t solve financial advice woes
By George Lucas, chief executive of Raiz More regulation will be the most likely result after the Hayne royal commission hands down its final report. But is this really the answer? When then financial services royal commission hands down its final report by 1 February 2019, it’s odds-on it will call for more regulation. And the government of the day will duly oblige, rightly fearing the political fallout if it fails to implement the report’s recommendations in the wake of the malevolent behaviour being unveiled. The legislation will pass the Parliament, giving the regulators more power to keep the top end of town in line. And the regulators, whose reputations […]
