Bernadtte Inglis, CEO NGM Group
Newcastle Greater Mutual Group, the product of the recent merger of Newcastle Permanent Building Society and Greater Bank, has made good on its promise to use its scale to deliver new services, launching a digital home loan.
Available initially on the Newcastle Permanent website, the new service is capable of providing conditional approval in 20 minutes.
NGM Group chief executive Bernadette Inglis said customers have the choice of an end-to-end digital experience or a combination of digital and face to face.
Inglis said digital lending now accounts for about 5 per cent of mortgage sales and that share is likely to grow.
“This is a huge benefit for customers who are time poor and want control over their banking processes,” she said.
The new digital home loan will initially be open to borrowers refinancing and will be extended to new borrowers in coming months.
“Customers don’t need to provide physical copies of their documentation. They simply log in to our system, give us some basic details and we collect and collate all the info we need,” Inglis said.
NGM has worked with a range of service providers to put the technology and data services in place, including OCR Labs, DocuSign, illion, CoreLogic, LendFast and Loanworks.
“We are looking at partnerships to extend our capabilities. Our new method of digitally identifying customers could be used across more products and services, streamlining services across NGM Group.”
Open banking is not part of the process but that may come down the track.
Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank completed their merger at the end of February. Four months in, the two mutual banks are still operating on separate banking platforms.
Inglis said the group is making progress with the integration of a number of its systems, including HR and treasury.
“We are pleased with where we are at the moment. We have a strategic plan for the next three years and a roadmap. The thing that gives us a lot of confidence is the group’s financial strength, which includes a capital ratio of 22 per cent and liquidity of 19 per cent,” she said.
NGM Group has around 600,000 members and more than A$20 billion of assets. It has the biggest capital base for a mutual, at $1.6 billion, and is the tenth largest Australian-owned bank for household deposits.
Both the Newcastle Permanent and Greater Bank brands are being retained. NGM Group has committed to maintain branch numbers and not have any forced redundancies for two years.