New Zealand’s regulated open banking system became operational on 1 December. The first group of organisations were accredited to use the system on 19 December, including Akahu.
The policy objectives of the new open banking system are to promote innovation and competition. A key area of competition is loans.
Early adopter brokers and lenders are now using official open banking connections via Akahu to make it easier for consumers to apply for a loan.
Here’s how it works. When a consumer applies for a loan, the lender is required to assess whether the consumer can afford that loan. The lender will typically verify the consumer’s income, verify the details of any existing loans, and understand the consumer’s essential and discretionary spending.
If the consumer is filling out a digital loan application form, and manually inputting their income or estimated spend amounts in categories like insurance or groceries, it can lead to inaccurate inputs and abandonment of the process. Open banking enables the consumer to link their bank accounts so that the lender can fetch relevant data and automatically process that data, making the application process faster and more accurate.
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Simplicity is one of the home loan providers that is making use of the new official open banking APIs. CEO Sam Stubbs says:
“We’ve been advocating for a regulated open banking system for many years, and now we’re getting to use it. When a Simplicity member applies for a home loan with us, they can now share their financial information quickly and simply, without sharing their bank login credentials. And this means that we can assess their application and share a decision promptly.”
Indi is another new home loan provider. It has built a system for decisioning a home loan application within 15 minutes, and covers the legal and valuation costs of refinancing. High quality application data is essential for this type of “straight-through processing”. So Indi wants to ensure that the application data has been retrieved directly from the consumer’s bank accounts, rather than ingesting uploaded files that may have been tampered with. Co-CEO David Woods says:
“Open banking data gives us the confidence to make fast and accurate decisions. Our customers want a quick answer and a great rate, and we can give them both.”
Simplicity’s floating home loan rate is 4.20%, and Indi’s is 4.34%.
By contrast, floating home loan rates from the largest five banks are between 5.65% - 5.99%*.
This implies that consumers can get a much better deal by shopping around. For a $500,000 mortgage, the savings between the main bank rates, and the rates offered by Simplicity and Indi, would be at least $500 per month.
* Rates retrieved from Interest on 19 December 2025.
The majority of new home loans are originated through brokers in New Zealand. For consumers, the benefits are human advice, a simplified application process when applying to multiple lenders, and an expectation that the broker will be able to shop around for the sharpest price.
Brokers help consumers to prepare their loan application, including collecting the relevant financial information.
Squirrel has started using official open banking APIs as a method of collating financial information from clients. Founder John Bolton says:
“Some of our clients were wary of using the old screenscraping methods to share their financial information. This new open banking system is more secure, and there is a consistent set of rules for how it works across all of the major banks.”
New Zealand Home Loans (NZHL) is a nationwide home loan and insurance adviser network that focusses on helping clients to pay off their mortgages faster. It is also using the regulated open banking system to collect financial information from clients, and CEO Kip Hanna says:
Working with Akahu made it seamless to adopt the new open banking system with our lenders. It not only simplifies how clients share their financial information, reducing back-and-forth, but also ensures that data is handled securely. With this approach, we are already experiencing faster applications, higher completion rates, and ultimately a better overall experience for everyone involved.
If you’d like to try the official open banking connection flows yourself, and see the open banking statements that are generated via Akahu Apply, please get in touch at hello@akahu.nz.
