Bluestone partners with Thoughtworks to launch digital lending platform

By Leandra Monteiro

Thoughtworks, a global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to drive digital innovation has partnered with Bluestone, the home loans solutions organisation, to launch a full suite of modern digital capabilities that elevate the broker and borrower experience.

A fast-growing, full-service lender providing residential home loan solutions to customers across Australia and New Zealand, Bluestone saw the rapidly evolving digital landscape as its springboard to becoming a future-ready organisation. It partnered with Thoughtworks to fast-track this ambition via a cloud-hosted digital lending platform that would deliver greater transparency to brokers, borrowers and employees, and facilitate a modern and intuitive approach to loan servicing and collections.

In the midst of a volatile home loan market, Thoughtworks developed a new way for Bluestone to address security, risk and compliance. It replaced an outdated legacy mortgage platform with a more holistic self-service web portal for lending, which features a mobile-friendly user experience. Through the new systems and processes, Bluestone has been able to automate six key customer service processes and save an average of 690 minutes on loan applications per day.

“One of the real benefits of engaging with Thoughtworks was that they didn’t treat us like a customer – they really worked with us like a partner. That really meant we got a much better outcome in a much quicker time,” said Campbell Smyth, CEO at Bluestone. “Since implementing the platform, technology is no longer a limiting factor in what we do, but it actually drives some of the great outcomes that we’re achieving. Ultimately, that translates to a better experience for our customers.”

In addition to the self-service web portal, Thoughtworks created an innovative solution to replace traditional CRM, which allows Bluestone to plug-in an external app to manage customer service activities with guided workflows. This app sits in AWS (Amazon Web Services), nurturing full control of Bluestone’s customer service processes and making it virtually seamless.

“Working alongside Bluestone from the inception of the project meant that we could draw on our technical expertise and domain knowledge to turn their vision into reality. Collaborating across teams within the organization accelerated our efforts in developing a best-in-class solution that was easy to use and provided clear benefits for all stakeholders and Bluestone’s customers,” said Manu Iyer, director of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) and Fintech at Thoughtworks Australia.