The Objective

Mortgage Choice is an Australian financial services provider with a national franchise network of 500+ professional advisers and mortgage brokers. They help Australian borrowers make better choices for a better life by providing quality financial advice and the best home loans from their panel of over 25 lenders.

Recently, Mortgage Choice rolled out its new cloud-based Broker Platform. The multi-million dollar investment in technology enables brokers to write home loans faster, which improves the overall customer experience and helps franchisees grow and future-proof their businesses.

Concurrently, Mortgage Choice was in the midst of a digital transformation initiative to solidify its competitive position in the Australian financial services market. Using an API-led approach, they were making their services available to more than 500+ franchises and 1,100 users across multiple devices and channels. They wanted to provide their franchisees with secure yet seamless login to applications and deliver a bonza (that’s Aussie slang for excellent) user experience.

The Challenge

Mortgage Choice needed an identity and access management (IAM) platform that would allow the franchisor to deliver a stand-out experience to their franchises. As a financial institution, Mortgage Choice processes a high volume of sensitive customer data and transactions, so enterprise-grade security was a critical requirement.

As they worked toward a single user interface for their franchise users to interact with, they sought an IAM platform that could easily integrate both current and new systems with little reconfiguration, enabling agile response and delivering a quick return. They also wanted to avoid a custom build, so their developer resources could focus on delivering business value with features and functionality, instead of grappling with high-complexity security concerns.

The Solution

Mortgage Choice initially selected PingFederate as a single sign-on (SSO) solution for its employees. When their identity requirements expanded to include the broker experience, they did a competitive review. But they ultimately chose to expand their relationship with Ping and leverage the integrated capabilities of the Ping Intelligent Identity Platform to provide SSO, as well as secure their APIs for internal (new channels) and external (third-party) use cases.

Mortgage Choice is using PingOne to enable SSO to multiple cloud services, encompassing various development tools, ticket management systems, and invoicing systems. PingAccess provides endpoint security for APIs, microservices, and web-facing properties. The Mortgage Choice team configured PingDirectory to manage user security profiles and access all systems—both legacy and new—from a single interface to ensure that data and processes are protected across all solutions. They’ve also integrated Ping with several applications, including their Microsoft Dynamics CRM, G Suite, and their IBM workflow automation solution.

Ping’s support for open standards is also key for Mortgage Choice. “We’re having more and more discussions about consuming APIs from different providers. Being able to authenticate, expose our own data and consume their data using leading and emerging standards instead of spending time defining interfaces is paramount,” explains Michael Paredes, Head of Delivery.

“For example, Ping's SAML support allows Mortgage Choice to securely provision users to their new ZenDesk implementation whilst addressing their unique security concerns operating a franchise business model. SAML is very scalable and Mortgage Choice was able to get this up and running within a day.”