Lisa Montgomery to chair Sydney mortgage event

The conference will feature presentations from a number of key industry figures including ING Direct executive director of distribution Lisa Claes; Mortgage Choice chief executive Michael Russell; Pepper Group director of sales and distribution Mario Rehayem; and CBA general manager of group lending services Dan O’Neill.

The event brings together industry representatives in a collaborative discussion during which the latest developments, innovative thinking and insight are shared.

As competition among mortgage providers intensifies ahead of next week’s Reserve Bank meeting, harnessing digital technologies has become an important differentiator for many lenders.

Speaking to the event’s organisers, CBA’s Dan O’Neill said that digitising the loan origination process will benefit the customer, lender and broker, since they can spend more quality time on the customer’s needs rather than explaining their way through a maze of bank and industry forms and processes.

"There are multiple obstacles in Australia to reaching this goal, but that doesn’t mean it’s unachievable,” Mr O’Neill said.

“It just needs the entire industry to move together akin to the digital settlement solution we have all collaborated on with [the electronic conveyancing network] PEXA.

“Moving the home loan industry away from an insistence on ‘wet’ (physically signed) signatures to secure digital signatures is obviously a key obstacle to overcome."

Loan Origination Excellence 2015 will be held at Sydney’s Swissotel on Wednesday 25 February and Thursday 26 February.