With the advent of open banking , it has become much easier to share financial information with trusted parties . While the initial boom was mainly driven by unsecured lending , we see an increasing interest from mortgage providers in this approach . What is effectively happening , is the need to send statements over an email to the lender ( or a broker ) is being replaced by granting consent for the lender to analyse the account information of the applicant automatically .

And the same process has the potential to replace the initial interview with the broker , which tries to establish initial affordability . While it often is a set of simple questions , few applicants can provide accurate answers to how much they spend when broken down into specific categories – or even what financial products they use . The use of open banking is speeding up the process and makes it far more seamless from the applicant ’ s point of view .

However , this is only part of the story . What happens with the data is also important . In the traditional process , the lender receives lots of pdf files of varying ( mostly poor ) quality and has to manually , or at best use some semi-automated way to go through it , looking for some familiar items . This is time-consuming , prone to errors and still limited only to the customary three months of data . With open banking , though , it ’ s now possible to retrieve standardised transaction data which is far easier to process .

Some providers – such as Bud – have built dedicated tools to analyse this information and provide a clear overview of the applicant ’ s financial situation . We ’ re using sophisticated AI models to go far beyond what is possible in a manual process , and we ’ re able to provide a variety of insights from income and income stability to specific flags tailored to the lender ’ s process .

All of this happens in seconds rather than in hours , meaning that it ’ s no longer a week to wait for the decision in principle – it might happen quicker , reducing anxiety on the applicant ’ s side and enabling the lender to outcompete others .

But the technology goes beyond this , as the data used also helps to better understand the market and continuously adjust how scorecards are built and what are the acceptable levels of risk . Bud helps financial institutions move from transaction-level insights , through customer-level and all the way up to the full understanding of the portfolio . This is ultimately beneficial for all parties involved . The proper use of data and technology speeds up decision processes , enables a better understanding of customers and the outcomes – and makes it easier for the customer to get the financial products they need and can afford . �

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