Australia’s RedZed has become the first mortgage lender in the world to go live with SAP’s Cloud for Banking platform, the software giant has announced.

Following a “supplier evaluation”, RedZed, a residential and commercial mortgage lender, selected the SaaS platform based on a number of key criteria, including ease of implementation and use, its cloud-based and “API-driven” architecture, and facility to meet local regulations.

SAP said its “agile, open and secure platform” enables the lender to access to real-time data and integration with third-party APIs, driving improved operational management.

Cloud for Banking encompasses a number of separate elements, including SAP S/4HANA Finance, SAP Banking (Loans and Deposits), and SAP Payments Engine, all of which run on SAP Cloud and managed by SAP Cloud Application Services.

RedZed has since migrated its data onto the Cloud for Banking platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Having consolidated data onto a single platform, SAP said the lender has significantly improved experiences for staff, customers, and brokers.

Giving staff access to customer data “in real time” has reduced processing time for mortgage applications, improved response time to customer enquiries, it added. For brokers, it is also “streamlining the process of assessing, identifying and originating mortgage loans in the platform”.

RedZed loan book has grown significantly in recent years, demanding a scalable and flexible infrastructure solution to support future growth, the company said.

Founded in 2006, RedZed provides a combination of residential and commercial mortgages to more than 6,000 self-employed Australians.

RedZed managing director Evan Dwyer said the lender has ambitions to be the “largest provider of financial services for the self-employed in Australia – bigger than the big four’s business banks”.

“Olympic runners don’t wear thongs,” he said.

“We have huge ambitions – in the near term we want to increase our loan book to $10 billion. In order to do this, we need a world-class system that will match our vision and enable us to scale.”

“The new platform has enabled our staff to realise value quickly by providing accurate data that is improving our relationship with our customers and partners. This data also means our senior management team are equipped with real-time updates on business performance and can respond to the needs of investors and regulators as and when required,” Dwyer added.

RedZed follows in the footsteps of Aussie neobank Xinja, which in 2018 became the first financial services organisation to go live with SAP’s Cloud for Banking platform.

Damien Bueno, president and managing director of SAP Australia and New Zealand acknowledged that SAP “may not have always been thought of as the partner to enable a fast-growing finance business like RedZed, but we’ve proved ourselves time and again as an agile cloud technology partner for the financial services sector”.

“Our cloud-based core banking solution is quick to deploy, and easy to use, delivering RedZed the opportunity to build delightful customer experiences and meet its vision to be the biggest provider of financial services for the self-employed in Australia.”