Westpac New Zealand’s head of data and AI says open banking activity is “surging” as the bank introduces an open banking-powered automated tool in the hopes of shortening processing times for its personal loan applications.
People who apply for personal loans through Westpac One, the bank’s digital and online banking platform, are now able to choose to have transaction data from their Westpac accounts automatically categorised, while also uploading multiple statements from other financial providers.
Previously, when people applied for a personal loan from Westpac NZ, they needed to manually categorise and enter this information themselves. This process would take up to 25 minutes on average for Westpac customers, according to Russell Jones, Westpac NZ's chief data, digital and AI officer, and longer for applicants who needed to upload statements from other banks.
Following the completion of the tool’s rollout on Thursday, Jones told interest.co.nz that across a pool of 500 applicants so far, the new tool had reduced the average time required to apply for a personal loan by approximately 25%.
Down the track, Westpac NZ is aiming for customers to be able to access the money in an hour if their application meets the bank’s personal loan eligibility requirements.
“We typically approve [personal loan applications] in one to two days at the moment, and that's pretty standard across the industry,” Jones said.
“However, we're releasing a new version of our loan application system going out early next year, and that should take the time down, certainly for Westpac customers, to a one to two-hour period.”
The tool was developed by NZ-based fintech Akahu. Westpac NZ’s Red Bird Ventures is Akahu’s largest shareholder and holds an almost 36% stake in the fintech. Akahu is an open finance and open banking infrastructure provider that uses its technology to connect people’s financial accounts to third parties, such as apps and banking services.
Akahu co-founder Josh Daniell told interest.co.nz that it can be hard for people to recall their spending when they’re applying for a personal loan.
“If you ask that applicant to share data using open banking, it's simple for the applicant, the lender gets accurate data rather than someone's recall, and the collection and verification of that data happens in the same fell swoop,” he said.
“Ultimately, it leads to a faster application process.”
Open banking activity on the rise
Open banking allows people to securely share financial data with trusted third parties, like financial technology (fintech) companies, through application programming interfaces (APIs). An API is a set of rules that allows different software applications to talk to each other and share information.
After new open banking regulations went live in December 2025, the country's four largest banks – ANZ NZ, ASB, BNZ, and Westpac NZ – were required to enable their customers to be able to securely share their financial data with accredited providers. Kiwibank, NZ's fifth largest bank, was given a later timeframe to meet the new open banking regulations and the bank finished rolling out open banking in May.
Jones said Westpac NZ customer use of open banking is “continuing to surge.”
“Last month users shared account information securely through APIs more than two million times, representing a 46% increase in account access requests on the previous month,” he said.
Westpac NZ also saw roughly 5,000 new account information requests (when an authorised third-party requests access to a user’s bank data from a bank) and processed 117,000 open banking payments in September.
“It’s picking up,” Jones said. “Since December last year, we've increased sixfold.”
Sticky points
Daniell said the regulated open banking framework launched last December has helped make open banking access easier and more secure for financial institutions and applicants alike.
“If you were asking an applicant to use open banking before the regulated system went live, it would involve that applicant entering the login credentials for their bank into a third-party service. It was always a sticky point for an organisation like a bank where on one hand they’re saying to their customers, you shouldn't use these processes, but then in a loan application, they actually do want to use it,” he said.
“So, they were in a hard spot. And now with the regulated system, that issue goes away. The applicant gets redirected to their bank to log in and authorise the sharing of data. It's now just a lot more comfortable to make this ask of the applicant. There's no sticky point, and it just leads to a better experience for the applicant.”
Daniell said Westpac NZ’s use of the regulated open banking framework will send “a bit of a signal” to the rest of the banking industry.
“It’ll spur on other activity, and we're really excited to see those competition and innovation benefits get unlocked by people using this new system,” he said.
Open banking is the first sector covered by NZ’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) framework, introduced under the Customer and Product Data Act 2025. The CDR is currently focused on banking, but regulated open electricity is expected to be the next sector developed under the framework.
Through the new centralised standards management model for open banking that the Government adopted last year, responsibility for open banking standards was also fully shifted from the bank industry-owned Payments NZ to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) in September.
Westpac’s Jones told interest.co.nz that at a high level, it makes “perfect sense” for there to be one agency – MBIE – that's across all of these industry standards.
“And in that sense, open banking is just the first cab off the rank on that. Having a public agency that can manage the standards, work with the relevant industry to develop those standards and move them forward, has the trust of the industry from all sides, fintech, consumers, providers, banks and so on... we see that as a really nice clean example of a single agency facilitating a better ability for the economy to thrive and operate,” he said.
“We already have a really close relationship with MBIE and we see that as being essential. We've had it since the CDR came out, and it also helps being their banker. That usually opens a few doors for us, and obviously we work with them on other things.”
Westpac has been the NZ Government's main banker since 1989.
A new chapter
Daniell described open banking as having entered “a new chapter” after switching from a bank-led approach to a regulated activity now that MBIE has “taken over the reins” from Payments NZ.
“It will ensure that the open banking standards are aligned with the purposes of the regulation. And the purposes of the regulation really are to increase competition and innovation,” he said.
“It didn't make sense to have a bank-owned body in charge of the standards that apply [to open banking]. It makes sense for MBIE to be policymaker and the regulator for open banking and to be responsible for those standards to ensure that alignment.”
Daniell said the regulated system going live has been “a real inflection point” in terms of activity. Up until the regulation went live, Akahu was onboarding one to two new open banking products or organisations each month.
“And now the rate is 12 or 13 per month,” he said.
Daniell also said NZ’s open banking adoption rate had progressed much faster than some countries overseas.
He pointed to the UK, which is widely considered a world leader when it comes to open banking, reporting 320,000 open banking payments and 66 million data and payment requests in 2018, the first year open banking was officially launched in the UK.
In comparison, NZ recorded 550,000 open banking payments and over 24 million data-sharing requests in August of this year alone.
“Our adoption of the regulated system in NZ has been much faster than what we've seen in the UK and Australia, which are the two countries we most often compare ourselves with on open banking,” he said.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.