Regional Australia Bank have partnered with Basiq to provide input into this innovative new tool for their home lending specialists.

Campbell Nicoll, Chief Risk Officer from Regional Australia Bank said "It is still early days but we anticipate this enhanced capability, and the higher-quality conversations we are able to have with our customers as a result, will improve overall assessment accuracy reducing bad debt and contributing to bottom line savings in the order of tens of thousands of dollars annually.”

Rather than using the HEM benchmark, Regional Australia Bank home lending specialists can now use actual amounts for living expenses based on real bank transaction data. They use this information to establish trust and transparency with the customer. Given they already know where and how the customers spend their money, it means that they don't have to ask personal questions that can't easily be answered.

This allows their valuable lending specialists to then focus on value-add activities. They spend a third of the time on applications. It has removed the need to verify income and expenses using manual payslips and bank statements to attach to the application, which is a big win for the customer - who has a much more seamless loan application experience.

Damir Cuca, CEO of Basiq says “At Basiq we know that bank transaction data is extremely powerful. Our newly released Affordability Report takes advantage of advanced machine learning algorithms - ensuring lenders can use verified living expenses and income to make more informed decisions.”

The collaboration puts Regional Australia Bank in the unique position to take advantage of Basiq's Open Banking platform when the Banking API's become publicly available. They are already taking advantage of bank transaction data and in the future, they will be able to make decisions based on aggregated information across all of their customers' bank accounts.