Westpac launches new corporate lending portal

Westpac Banking Corp has launched a new internet banking portal for its corporate customers to make it easier to drawdown loans and request guarantees, a move it hopes will help its institutional bank retain customers and lift revenue.

Ahead of a market briefing by Westpac Institutional Bank’s chief executive Lyn Cobley on Friday morning, presentation slides released to the ASX show Westpac will be seeking to use new technology to increase customer self-servicing in order to drive efficiencies.

In the first half, expenses in WIB were down 3 per cent from the previous half, to $657 million. Westpac Institutional Bank provides 17 per cent of Westpac Group’s earnings and delivers $3.1 billion of annual revenue.

Westpac has built a new “corporate lending portal” that digitises around $40 billion of loans that will be made available to 1,500 of the bank’s largest and more complex customers.

It will allow them to view lending and historical transactions and also to initiate drawdowns and seek standard guarantees, the bank says, meaning they don’t have to make such requests via phone, fax or email. Westpac said it should be able to eliminate dealing with 3000 requests per month.

The slide pack says this will “increase stickiness and support revenue uplift” while also generating more time for Westpac’s bankers to focus on deepening customer relationships.

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Source: Westpac launches new corporate lending portal | afr.com