Inside Beyond Bank’s journey from legacy platform to connected lending ecosystem

NextGen was proud to be Platinum Partner of the FST Media Future of Banking Summit, held on 10 September 2026 at the Telstra Customer Insights Centre, Sydney. The event brought together leaders from Australia’s banks, neobanks, mutuals and customer-owned institutions to explore the road ahead for the industry.

As part of our sponsorship, we invited Beyond Bank Australia’s Chief Operating Officer, Wendy den Hartog, to deliver a keynote address by sharing the bank’s lending transformation journey with NextGen, from replacing a 20-year-old legacy platform to becoming the first branch-based lender to bring Open Banking capabilities directly into the first-party lending experience.

From legacy system to connected ecosystem

Beyond Bank had operated on the same lending platform for 20 years before undertaking a comprehensive market review of vendors across capability, automation, support, training, cost and commitment to ongoing development. On what that meant for the organisation, Wendy said: “Having operated on the same lending platform for 20 years, you can imagine the change aspect that we went through in the business. It was important to rethink how we worked.”

“I remember how much resistance we had when we first started,” Wendy reflected. That mindset shaped the entire implementation. Rather than replicating existing processes on new technology, together with NextGen, Beyond Bank reviewed the bank’s processes, credit policies, reporting, documentation and operating rhythms from the ground up. Wendy described a “healthy challenge” throughout the design and build phase, with NextGen encouraging the bank to adopt best-practice processes and native platform functionality, “which, as you can imagine, was quite a challenge at times after 20 years of doing the same thing.”

That principle extended to some of the more unconventional decisions made along the way, including a deliberate choice not to place the platform owner role within the technology function. “That took a lot of convincing,” Wendy explained. “We need to make sure technology doesn’t drive what the experience is. We need to know what we want, and then we bring technology around it.”

Today, the platform supports Beyond Bank’s end-to-end lending journey. Data flows seamlessly from CRM into ApplyOnline to support application creation, decisioning, identity verification, valuations, document generation and settlement, before pushing through Beyond Bank’s integration layer into core banking for funding.

The results

The transformation has delivered measurable outcomes across the business:

• 14 days removed from Beyond Bank’s end-to-end lending journey. Wendy reflected on what that delay would mean today: “If we had those 14 days on our end-to-end application now, we simply wouldn’t be competitive with anybody.”
• 32 steps eliminated from the broker application process, reducing rekeying, duplicated handling and data risk.
• Fast refi applications can now be received, processed, generated for e-signature and funded within a single day.
• Documents generated in under three minutes in many cases, using straight-through processing and automation.

Beyond credit and efficiency, Wendy pointed to the flow-on effect for staff: a better user experience, higher productivity, and more time spent supporting members rather than on manual administration.

Introducing Wendy’s keynote, NextGen’s Head of Lender Partnerships, Mike Ponsonby, framed the scale of the challenge Beyond Bank had set out to solve: one lending system across every channel, with a single verification and assessment capability for all products. “What would that do on first-time right?” he asked. “What would it mean if you could have an Open Banking experience in a first-party capability as well?”

He pointed to the broader shift already underway across the industry, with Open Banking now supporting over 10% of applications in the broker market, a figure he expects to keep growing. Against that backdrop, he described Beyond Bank’s progress as a standout example of ambition turned into delivery: “They boldly took as an aspiration and quickly made an objective, and they’ve already turned that into reality.”

One platform, every channel

Beyond Bank’s transformation hasn’t been limited to a single product line. The bank has rolled out NextGen across home loans, in both broker and first-party channels, as well as personal loans and credit cards in its first-party channel, with bridging loans a further recent addition.

Running every product through the one connected platform has also meant the same embedded intelligence applies consistently across the board, including automated credit validation rules that flag application status in real time as staff enter details, and application cloning, which reduces rekeying and improves efficiency for members applying across multiple products.

The payoff has been a more scalable lending operation — one that has grown without a corresponding increase in staffing levels, while maintaining frequent data synchronisation across systems throughout the day.

Open Banking: the latest milestone

The most recent addition to that channel expansion has been Open Banking, securely bringing customer financial data directly into the application process. Beyond Bank became the first branch-based lender to bring Open Banking capabilities directly into the first-party lending experience, later extending it into its broker network.

The impact has been immediate. Wendy shared that applications using Open Banking are moving through approval around 50% faster than traditional processes, alongside improved data quality and reduced manual effort for both staff and members.

What’s next

Wendy was clear that the work isn’t finished. Beyond Bank’s roadmap includes expanding into business lending and digital self-service capabilities, alongside continued optimisation of the platform through NextGen’s monthly release cycle: “The platform continues to evolve alongside our business needs, which is important — we can’t afford for that to be a roadblock.”

Reflecting on the journey overall, Wendy said: “Our implementation of NextGen has been much more than a system replacement. It’s been a staged transformation, creating a connected lending ecosystem that continues to evolve and deliver value.”

Watch the NextGen 2026 FST Media Future of Banking Summit wrap video:

To learn more about Beyond Bank’s journey with NextGen, watch our full case study or read about their Open Banking launch in our recent media release.