Up to 90 minutes being saved per deal following open banking tech integration at national brokerage
Open banking technology is helping brokers have 90 minutes per deal, Mortgage Choice has revealed in an update to its proprietary Broker Platform.
By integrating Mortgage Choice brokers are able to directly import customers’ financial data into new deals, eliminating the need for onerous manual data entry and verification.
Mortgage Choice has adopted NextGen’s Frollo Financial Passport to facilitate open banking for its 1,100-plus brokers.
Open banking has been gaining traction in the Australian financial services sector since the formal launch of the Consumer Data Right (CDR) legislation in July 2020, which required major banks to make certain product and consumer data available to accredited third parties upon consumer request.
However, Australia still lags behind other markets such as the UK, where nearly one in three adults engage with open banking technology. In comparison, around 13% of brokers in Australia actively engage in open banking, according to open banking technology provider Frollo.
“There’s still a long way to go before the CDR lives up to its potential and open banking can flourish,” Frollo’s head of open banking Tony Thrassis recently said. “Progress hasn’t been fast or flashy, but momentum is building.”
Momentum has certainly been building at Mortgage Choice. In October alone, Mortgage Choice brokers used open banking to complete over 2,300 client requests. With recent upgrades to data import capability, adoption is expected to surge.
Nicole Devine, executive general manager product at Mortgage Choice parent REA Group, said: “In 2025, my team's mission was clear – we wanted to empower our brokers with tools that improve the way they work and create faster pathways to approval for their customers.
“Each update we’ve delivered to our Broker Platform has brought us closer to achieving that goal. By moving from document collection to data import, we are cutting down the most tedious part of a broker's job.
“The ability to import Open Banking data delivers huge efficiency gains for our brokers. When you combine the 20 minutes saved on manual data entry, 40 minutes on verification and 30 minutes on chasing clients for information, brokers will save at least 1.5 hours on each deal.”
One Mortgage Choice broker, Perth-based John Morley, called the open banking integration “a game changer…I can view up-to-date banking information, eliminating the need to chase up to date statements. It’s easy to use, secure and accurate and, best of all, it’s free”.
