The LIXI Community
Meet your LIXI Community: An Interview with Malcolm Watkins
For almost a decade, Malcolm Watkins, Executive Director at Australian Financial Group (AFG), has been drawing on the strengths and standards of LIXI to improve services for his customers. With this valued input, Mr Watkins aims to improve the existing processes of electronic lodgement and expand capabilities to support new features.
Mr Watkins, also the founding director of AFG and all AFG group companies, has strategic responsibility for AFG’s technology development programmes, electronic delivery systems and national marketing operations.
He explains he first become involved in LIXI in 2002 when AFG initiated the Trident Project, an arrangement between the three largest mortgage brokers and four of the industry leading banks which was established to implement electronic lodgement between brokers and lenders.
AFG, together with Aussie Home Loans, Mortgage Choice, ANZ, CBA, ING, and Macquarie had selected LIXI as the standard for electronic transfer of home loan application information. AFG than shared the lead role with LIXI in developing the standards for backchannel status messages and commissions payments, as well as ongoing commitment to the application standards.
“We are still working with LIXI to improve the existing processes of electronic lodgement and expand the capabilities to support new features that benefit our members and consumers,” he says. “AFG is pressing the lenders to implement downstream automation to provide even more benefits to the consumer.”
Mr Watkins says using LIXI standards makes it easier for AFG to interact with third parties. “LIXI was a great medium to bring third parties together and collaborate for mutual benefit, particularly our banking and lending partners in the ‘early days’,” he explains. “LIXI helped to create a momentum which drew the greater market place in to collaborate, and allowed third party software providers to build gateways and compete for data transfer services.”
Mr Watkins also praised the LIXI events as they created a platform that enabled industry participants an opportunity to network with peers and develop understandings in the industry.
He also says LIXI can add value for its member base by managing the ‘various flavours’ of the LIXI standards, in that “one of the major roles of the electronic lodgement gateway providers is to transform one flavour of LIXI to another”.
Meet your LIXI Community: An Interview with Simon Elwig
Simon Elwig, General Manager for Operational Planning, Finance and Support for Third Party Banking at the Commonwealth Bank, has an easier workload thanks to LIXI. “LIXI has enabled straight through processing for the lodgement of Broker applications online,” he says.
Mr. Elwig first learned about LIXI in 2003 when he was responsible for delivering online lodgement capability to Brokers for CBA. He was obviously impressed by LIXI’s potential – he was the former Director of LIXI between 2006 and 2010. He also espouses the benefits of joining the voluntary organisation. “Joining has made it easier for broker groups to lodge online with CBA using their own systems and receiving back channel messages,” he advises. “As the standard development for NCCP, LIXI has made it easier for Brokers to fulfill responsible lending requirements of Lenders.”
He believes LIXI has a strong future. “It has the ability to act as the “independent” enabler to bring all the mortgage industry players together to develop standards to improve the B2B efficiency of the whole industry,” he says.
Meet your LIXI Community: An Interview with Gary O’Sullivan
As the Senior Manager for Intermediary Distribution at St. George Bank, Gary O’Sullivan believes a central place from which data can be accessed is essential. And he says belonging to LIXI has helped achieve this. “It is easier to implement standards as LIXI has most of them and this ensures our IT Teams build to these,” he explains.
Mr. O’Sullivan added LIXI set the benchmarks around which his own team could plan. “Being a member of LIXI ensure we stay in line with the Industry expectations and do not go off in the wrong direction and end up designing something the industry will not use.
“It has also helped me better understand broker requirements with this standardization.”
He first became involved with LIXI in 2003 when designing and implementing the STG/BSA electronic lodgement system. “LIXI CAL was the standard language at that time, and we used it as the basis of our build,” he explains.
"Mr. O’Sullivan sees LIXI has playing a guiding role in the lending market. “LIXI still needs to ensure that lenders and brokers work towards the same goals and their role in ensuring this is important,” he says. “The introduction of new standards will also require management and this will involve someone in the middle ensuring the needs of all parties are met.”
