News and Events

BOQ and Sandstone Given 5 Star Rating in Internet Banking System Survey

Bank of Queensland’s (BOQ) internet banking system has been rated as one of the best internet banking systems in Australia in a survey published this month.

The recent survey conducted by PC Authority Magazine, rates the bank’s system (developed by Sydney-based Sandstone Technology) behind only NAB’s in-house developed online portal.

BOQ’s internet banking system, described in the survey as ‘a well thought out site with plenty of features’, was given an overall five star rating out of a possible six based on the system’s user interface, features and security.

"The fact that customers of Bank of Queensland are getting a better and more secure Internet Banking experience than many of the majors reinforces the Bank’s position as a real contender in the Australian banking industry and its commitment to using technology to offer customers even greater convenience in doing their banking," says Bob Hall, CEO of Sandstone Technology.

"Both BOQ and Sandstone are committed to offering our customers the best possible service, and so we are not going to rest until our internet banking offering is rated the best on market."

As part of an ongoing program of enhancements to its online banking offering, BOQ launched Sandstone’s mobile banking solution to its customers this month.

BOQ has been using the Sandstone Internet Banking system since 2006. A number of other deposit taking institutions also use the Sandstone Internet Banking system, including Members Equity Bank, Rabobank and Credit Union Australia.

BOQ launches innovative, high speed Mobile banking solution

Bank of Queensland (BOQ) customers now have access to one of the world’s fastest and most innovative mobile banking services following its successful launch earlier this week.

Customers can use their iPhone or any mobile device with an SSL capable browser to check their bank balances, pay their bills, authorise payments and much more. Importantly, no personal details are stored on the customer’s mobile device.

The Sandstone developed solution is among the fastest mobile banking applications in the world. Efficient coding and compressed file sizes provide excellent response times on even the slowest mobile phone connection that people normally associate with broadband internet services.

Furthermore, "very little data is physically transmitted across the mobile network, resulting in faster performance and very low mobile phone carrier costs for customers" says Sandstone’s spokesperson, Andrew McPherson.

Key considerations in the Bank’s selection of the Sandstone developed solution include its ease of use, high speed and low usage cost (especially low phone carrier data cost) according to Craig Broomfield, BOQ’s Head of Direct Banking.

"BankLink Mobile provides us with an innovative, next generation mobile banking experience for our customers. Customers can sign in and start banking almost instantaneously without having to download any special software into their phones."

To ensure optimum take-up and user acceptance, the solution underwent rigorous usability research and testing prior to and during its development says Mr McPherson.

"We applied a user centred design process entailing user research and iterations of testing and design. We did this to ensure the best possible user experience and to limit any potential mobile banking take-up issues" he says.

To guarantee support for the widest possible range of mobile phones and browsers, the application was developed to comply with international standards for mobile content including W3C Mobile Web Best Practices.

Sandstone also offers an SMS text banking system that allows customers to check their account balances, view a history of transactions and receive payment and bill notifications on their mobile phone.

BOQ has been using Sandstone’s BankLink Internet Banking Solution since 2006 with its system recently named among the best internet banking systems in Australia in a survey published this month.

A number of other deposit taking institutions also use the Sandstone Internet Banking system, including Members Equity Bank, Rabobank and Credit Union Australia.

BOQ customers get mobile with Sandstone’s mobile browser-based banking system

Bank of Queensland (BOQ) has selected BankLink Mobile, Sandstone’s easy to use, browser-based mobile banking solution, for its customers.

BankLink Mobile works on any mobile phone with an SSL capable browser, including PDAs and Blackberry devices often used by business people. This enables access to a much wider customer base than is possible with older Java Applet-based solutions that have to be certified on specific handset models. This removes the usability barriers that have hindered past mobile banking efforts and means that BOQ customers can use their existing mobile handsets without requiring special SIM cards or software downloads.

Customers using BankLink Mobile can perform the full range of internet banking functions, including checking bank account balances, paying bills and authorising payments, all from their mobile phone device. The system is easy to use as the banking information displayed on a customer’s phone is identical to the familiar data presented on a customer’s Internet computer screen.

Key considerations in the Bank’s selection of BankLink Mobile were its ease of use, high speed, and low usage cost (especially low phone carrier data cost) to Craig Broomfield, BOQ’s Head of Direct Banking.

“BankLink Mobile provides us with an innovative, next generation mobile banking experience for our customers. Customers can register, log in and start banking almost instantaneously without having to download special software into their phones as they’d need to do with Java Applet solutions,” he says.

According to Sandstone spokesperson, Andrew McPherson, “very little data is physically transmitted across the mobile network, resulting in faster performance and very low mobile phone carrier costs for customers.”

In addition to BankLink Mobile, Sandstone offers a BankLink SMS text banking system. SMS customers can check their account balances, view a history of transactions and receive payment and bill notifications on their mobile phone. This service can be used on any mobile device with access to SMS services, including older mobile phones that may not have a web browser.

BOQ has been using Sandstone’s BankLink Internet Banking solution since 2006. Sandstone’s BankLink Internet Banking solution is also used by Rabobank Australia, Arab Bank, Adelaide Bank and Credit Union Australia.

About Bank of Queensland

Bank of Queensland is Australia’s fastest-growing retail bank with a network of more than 250 branches, and is one of the country’s top 150 listed companies.

Police & Nurse Chooses Sandstone's LendFast System for High Volume Loan Processing

Police & Nurses Credit Society, Western Australia’s largest and Australia’s fourth largest credit union, has chosen Sandstone Technology’s new LendFast Enterprise loan origination system to underpin its fast growing lending business.

LendFast Enterprise was developed to meet the needs of large financial institutions that need to process thousands of loan applications each day. It is Sandstone’s third generation lending system and was developed specifically for large lenders requiring a componentised system to be integrated into an enterprise SOA systems environment.

Police & Nurses’ CEO, Fred Huis, says that the Society was looking for a system that could accommodate significant ongoing growth in their credit card, personal loan and mortgage businesses.

“Our lending business has been growing by more than 20% each year for the past three years and we need a best-practice loan processing system with unlimited future growth capacity,” he says.

Bob Hall, the founder and CEO of Sandstone Technology says that LendFast Enterprise fills a longstanding gap in the lending system market.

“For many years we have been supplying end-to-end lending systems to large regional banks, credit unions and building societies. Unfortunately, no similar systems have been available for the very large banking and lending institutions. Consequently, each of these organisations had been forced to design, build and maintain their own in-house lending systems at great cost and with limited success,” Mr. Hall says.

“Two years ago we saw an opportunity to apply our lending system knowledge and experience and take advantage of new and emerging system technologies to build a completely new, scalable and componentised Australian lending solution for these customers,” he says.

Police & Nurses selected LendFast Enterprise following an extensive investigation of available loan origination systems from leading Australian suppliers. “LendFast won hands down” says Andy Bovan, Police & Nurses’ senior business analyst and leader of the system evaluation team. “No other system even comes close for functionality and scalability, the two key factors we were looking for in our search for the ideal lending system.”

While LendFast Enterprise provides a rich layer of user customisation, Police & Nurses will minimise changes to the system as supplied by Sandstone. The system will be deployed rapidly in coming months and is scheduled to be fully operational across all lines of lending business early in 2008.

Additional system modules are also planned for future implementation, including the LendFast LIXI broker interface and the LendFast Web online loan application facility. Once implemented, LendFast will automatically manage and control the loan origination process towards the ultimate goal of straight through processing with minimal manual intervention.

Australia’s largest Credit Union, Credit Union Australia, has also recently successfully implemented Sandstone’s LendFast Enterprise system which is already processing high volumes of Personal Loans and Mortgage lending applications.

Mortgage Supply Chain Costs can be cut by 25% According to Lending Industry Expert

(Sydney, Wednesday, June 13, 2007 ): Financial services industry consulting leader, Fujitsu, believes that organisations can remove 25% of sales costs from the mortgage supply chain by streamlining their loan origination process.

At a recent conference hosted by loan origination specialist Sandstone Technology, Fujitsu’s Managing Consulting Director Martin North presented key benchmarked mortgage industry averages that highlighted the pressing need for smarter processing techniques by Australian lenders.

With at least 25% of sales costs able to be removed from the mortgage supply chain (source: Australian Council of Mortgage Lenders) through increasing processing efficiencies, lenders are looking at alternative loan origination methods as they look to get ahead in today’s competitive market.

“The current average time from receipt of a loan application to the issue of a first offer, known as time to yes, is 16 working days while the standard industry time to cash, that is the time from receipt of the loan application to its completion and issue of funds, is currently 52 working days,” Mr North said.

”Australian lenders looking to gain an edge over their competitors need to look at ways of reducing both time to yes and time to cash. Lenders should be looking at increasing processing efficiency through the automation of the interface between customers, lenders, lawyers and surveyors,” he said.

Several Australian financial institutions use Sandstone’s LendFast system to automate the loans process and significantly reduce the time it takes to turnaround a loan application according to Sandstone’s Lending Solutions General Manager, Brent Jackson.

“We have customers who can achieve time to yes in around 30 minutes and time to cash within days which suggests that a significant proportion of a lender’s current costs can be removed from the sales process,” Mr Jackson says.

LendFast enables lenders to process up to three times their current volume of loan applications without increasing staff levels.
A breakdown of the costs involved in the loans process is presented in the table below.

Source: Fujitsu Consulting – Mortgage Industry Model

Sandstone Technology signs agreement with RSA to Provide Enhanced Consumer Protection for its Financial Service Customers

(Sydney, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 ): RSA, The Security Division of EMC, (NYSE: EMC) announced it has entered into a strategic partnership as a Value Added Reseller (VAR) with Sandstone Technology, a leading developer and integrator of specialised software, services and solutions for the banking and financial services markets. The strategic partnership will help financial services providers to accelerate their business through strengthened online security and enhanced consumer confidence in the Internet channel.

RSA will integrate its technology with Sandstone’s solutions within the banking and finance sectors. The first joint project is with a top ten Australian Bank where Sandstone will build the software to integrate with RSA® Transaction Monitoring solution. This will then progress towards the RSA® Adaptive Authentication solution.

“Our solutions are designed to be convenient, scalable and cost-effective while giving institutions a solid tool with which they can protect their customers' assets, identities and information. Through this strategic partnership Sandstone customers will receive strong online fraud protection in the market today delivered through a trusted, local provider. Banks will also join the RSA® eFraudNetwork™ community. This is the industry's most effective cross-institution, cross-platform online anti-fraud network dedicated to sharing and disseminating information on fraudulent activity. By engaging locally with the channel managers in the banks, both parties take the sales message to market” said Geoff Noble, RSA Banking and Finance Specialist.

“We are committed to providing best-of-best solutions,” said Steve Kunkler, Sandstone’s General Manager, Internet Banking Solutions. “RSA Transaction Monitoring and RSA Adaptive Authentication solutions complement our leading direct banking solutions by creating a comprehensive authentication platform that provides cost-effective protection for an entire end user base.”

The RSA Transaction Monitoring system is engineered to give financial institutions the state-of-the-art tools and data they need to assess online banking transactions and take appropriate action in real-time, using the sophisticated RSA Risk Engine. Based on the risk score of each transaction, the financial institution can use the detailed case management application inherent in the RSA Transaction Monitoring system and their own business rules to determine the appropriate course of action, such as conducting a manual review and seeking further identification of the user, or blocking the transaction outright.

The RSA Adaptive Authentication includes RSA’s proven risk-based authentication technology that is engineered to analyse all online banking transactions in real-time and calculate a risk-score for each. Using the risk score, the solution is designed to automatically implement strong authentication methods, such as secret questions or an automated ‘out-of-band’ phone call in real time, for high-risk transactions while low-risk transactions are seamlessly approved and securely processed with no hindrance to the customer.

Sandstone Technology launches full function, highly scalable Lending Solution

Sydney, 26 February 2007): Sandstone Technology, the leading supplier of lending systems in Australia, has launched last week its new LendFast Enterprise Lending system targeted at major financial institutions processing over 1,000 loan applications per day.

Announcing the new system at the Mortgage Processing Conference in Sydney last week, Bob Hall, CEO of Sandstone Technology, said that LendFast Enterprise fills a longstanding need for a full function, highly scalable loan origination processing solution for major banks and other lending institutions.

“Until now, major lenders have had to develop their own in-house systems to process high volumes of mortgages, personal loans and credit card applications” Mr Hall says.

“More and more lending institutions are coming to us as they see the potential benefits of higher revenues, lower costs and faster decision making capabilities associated with end to end automation of the loans process,” Mr Hall says. “These projects have historically proven to be extremely expensive, time consuming, resource intensive and risky,” he continues. “Building a system capable of managing the complexities of the lending process, together with the interfaces needed to integrate with existing back-end banking systems, credit agencies and distribution agencies, require a great deal of effort.” He says.

LendFast Enterprise, a J2EE enterprise application, enables lenders to process up to three times their current volume of loan applications without increasing staff levels. The system was developed in Australia and allows organisations to process thousands of loan applications each day. It expands on the capabilities provided by Sandstone’s previous lending systems which are currently used by many regional banks, large credit unions and building societies to process mortgage, personal loan and credit card applications.

LendFast Enterprise interfaces with the company’s other lending system solutions, including the LendLink LIXI Broker Gateway, Mobile Lender Toolkit and Valuation Management Service which manages the ordering and fulfillment of property valuation requests from a panel of over 2,350 valuers working in 126 valuation firms. This service has a proven ability to decrease valuation costs by over 50% while improving valuation turnaround times to less than one day.

Lending Solutions Innovator to Sponsor Mortgage Processing Conference

Lending solutions innovator, Sandstone Technology, will be an exhibitor and sponsor of the upcoming Mortgage Processing Conference in Sydney from February 20 -21.

Bringing together key decision makers from within the finance industry, the conference will explore ways in which financial institutions can achieve operating efficiency by reducing both the time and costs involved in the lending process.

Sandstone CEO, Bob Hall, suggests that with the mortgage industry now becoming increasingly competitive, more and more financial institutions are automating their lending processes as they look for faster and less expensive processing capabilities.

“More and more lending institutions are coming to us as they see the potential benefits of higher revenues, lower costs and faster decision making capabilities associated with end to end automation of the loans process,” Mr Hall says.

“Financial institutions using our LendFast system are able to process triple the volume of loan applications than they can under a manual or less sophisticated system without needing to increase their staff levels,” he says.

Additionally, the company’s property valuation management solution can help reduce valuation costs by over 30% and improve turnaround times to less than one day.

Mr Hall will be presenting on ‘Trends in Mobile Lending Technology’ on the second day of the conference and will be discussing how technological opportunities are now making mobile lenders in the field more productive.

The Mortgage Processing Conference will be held at the Menzies Sydney Hotel from February 20-21. For conference details and registration, please visit the conference website at www.mprevent.com.au