Consumer demand for digital services has generated significant investment in a new type of patented technology designed to dramatically cut the time it takes for lenders to process a mortgage application.
The patent owned by Sydney-based Nano Digital Home Loans, was backed with A$33 million series-A investment by New Zealand private investor Bolton Equities, while the Sydney-based company was run by New Zealand chief executive and co-founder Andrew Walker.
The product called the Automated Real-Time Digital Mortgage Application and Decisioning Engine was patented in Australia last month.
"Many are claiming to be digital, but a website application sitting on top of yesterday's broken processes is not the future," Walker said.
The key to Nano's technology was open banking and a process called screen scraping, which gave it access to customer banking information held by other financial institutions.
"We get one time access through a portal to the applicant's online banking details," Walker said.
That data was then processed in real time, giving Nano a quick snapshot of a customer's finances, income and expenses, in order to form a credit profile and write a home mortgage in about 15 minutes.
"Our patented technology platform and proprietary algorithms replace weeks of manual effort, rework and frustration with a fast, seamless, paper-free process."
The Australian market for the home loans product was estimated at A$100 billion, he said.
Nano had already written A$100m in unconditionally approved loans in the first month since the public launch of business in Australia.
"This speaks volumes of the market appetite for our disruptive technology," Walker said.
"We're enabling Australian homeowners to break free from outdated traditional systems and experience a new way of securing and managing their mortgage."
The next step was to take the business global, however expansion to New Zealand could be some way off, while the Reserve Bank continued to review the rules for open banking, which currently did not allow screen scraping, he said.
In the meantime, Walker said Nano would be expanding into the global market with three different types of product offers, including a direct to consumer produce, and licensing to other businesses.
RNZ
