Lenders gear up for Open Banking revolution
MORE peer-to-peer lenders have revealed how they propose to capitalise on the opportunities presented by Open Banking.
David Bradley-Ward, chief executive of Ablrate, told Peer2Peer Finance News the secured business lender wants to automate some of the functions that are manual at present and is investigating how it can use Open Banking to provide more tools to lenders.
Read more: New report reveals how lenders can best attract customers via Open Banking
“The main business opportunity for us will be on the borrower side,” he said.
“We already provide credit data to lenders on all our borrowers, which is updated monthly via API (application programming interface). This allows lenders to have current credit data as well as historical data to aid their decisions when trading loans. To get even more granular would be great for lenders who trade loans on our secondary market, but it will also be a valuable credit monitoring tool.”
Read more: Plum uses Open Banking to integrate challenger bank accounts
John Battersby, spokesperson for RateSetter, said Open Banking has the potential to fundamentally change how customers use their data, but making the most of the opportunity ultimately depends on enabling great customer experiences.
“We’ve been collaborating with the Open Banking Implementation Entity to ensure that APIs are not built simply to meet regulation, but to bring something new and useful to customers and third-party providers,” he added.
Earlier this year, Zopa and Lending Works separately announced plans to streamline the lending process through the new data-sharing initiative.
Zopa launched an income verification tool that automatically pulls data from a person’s bank, while Lending Works introduced a similar tool through a partnership with credit reference start-up Credit Kudos.
Read more: Zopa says its customers have welcomed Open Banking