Bankwest develops its first third-party API

Bankwest has created its first third-party API that integrates its systems with online home loan platform, Lendi.

In late 2019, Lendi launched its approval confidence capability which, via third-party integrations, indicates in real-time to potential borrowers the likelihood of the approval of loan options from its integrated lender partners.

The bank activated the integration this week – a result of its investment in a cloud native platform – in a move that see the Lendi platform directly engage its assessment tools with the bank’s decision engine to provide more relevant results for users.

Bankwest’s cloud native platform provides continuous compliance through extensive automation. It combines in-house tools with Microsoft Azure App Service Environment to ensure governance steps, cyber security and change controls are combined for straight-through processing of application deployments.

Bankwest said it’s a critical part of its journey to public cloud, including future third-party innovations and it enables the development of new technology quickly and safely in response to the changing external environment while keeping customer data secure.

This first integration offers reassurance for potential borrowers by presenting them with an ‘approval confidence rating’ on tailored loan options rather than the generalised product listings available on many comparison sites, Bankwest said.

Andy Weir, EGM, technology and transformation at Bankwest, said taking out a mortgage is one of the biggest financial decisions of someone’s life and it can be a complicated process that needs to be simplified.

“When we talk about meeting changing customer needs in the digital age, these are the solutions we are talking about, because gone are the days of generic information being acceptable,” he said.

“That’s what has driven this partnership with Lendi: understanding that when customers provide their personal financial information to an assessment tool, they expect personalised results.”

Bankwest has been undergoing a transformation for a few years after realising that although its rate of interactions with its 1.1 million customers was rising exponentially, the amount of revenue earned from these was falling.

This was an economic threat to its business model which prompted the bank to morph into a digital organisation. Taking inspiration from Spotify’s business model, Bankwest dissolved its technology, products and distribution divisions and set up a ‘tribe, chapter and platform model. Five tribes are multidisciplinary teams, focused on rapid feature delivery and made up of capabilities provided by chapters.