Westpac has partnered with mortgage processing technology company NextGen to use open banking for home loan applications across all its brands.

The deal represents a change of heart for the bank, whose chief executive Peter King criticised the Consumer Data Right last year, saying few customers used it and it was not an efficient use of the bank’s resources. 

The NextGen technology that the bank will use allows loan applicants to share their financial information, including bank statements and transaction histories, with their broker through an open banking consent.

Brokers will receive instant access to a customer’s financial data from more than 110 participating financial institutions, speeding up the initial stages of the application process.

Westpac head of broker distribution Warren Shaw said in a statement: “Empowering our brokers and customers to auto-populate a range of data into applications leads to less rework and therefore improved decision times.”

NextGen claims to be Australia’s leading technology provider to the mortgage industry, with technology that handles applications, processing and settlement. It says 97 per cent of all brokers and 50 lenders use its electronic lodgement platform ApplyOnline.

NextGen chief customer officer Tony Carn said: “When open banking was first introduced it was seen as a secondary option, with screen scraping the preferred option. For many brokers it has become the primary tool, used in 80 to 100 per cent of loan applications.”

Carn said Commonwealth Bank’s move to enable ApplyOnline in September last year, gave open banking a big push among brokers.