The tie-up has been established to develop solutions for the UK’s Open Banking initiative, which enables online banking customers to share their financial data with authorised third parties.

The alliance will allow consumers and small businesses to provide consent to organisations they would like to be able to access their financial data.

Equifax is also working with AccountScore – consents.online’s data analytics platform – which specialises in transaction data analytics for consumer and business lending, developing products that deliver enhanced data to financial service providers in real time, supporting lending decisions and making the application process smoother for customers.

This includes solutions which: 

• remove the need for manual payslips when completing financial applications
• categorise transaction data to provide more detailed insight on customers
• notify financial service providers of events in a customer’s life which could alter their requirements

“The vision for Open Banking is to enable people to unlock the power of their data to make the most of their money, giving them more transparency, control, security and access to help,” said Jake Ranson, banking and financial intuition expert and chief marketing officer at Equifax (pictured above).

“This can be achieved when the extensive data Equifax already holds is harmonised with bank transaction data. 

“Our detailed evaluation identified consents.online as the stand-out candidate to make this a reality, thanks to its long history and deep expertise in working with transaction data globally.”

Jake added that the Open Banking challenge was educating people on the latent value of data sitting in their current accounts. 

“This will encourage ‘value exchanges’, moments when a customer explicitly consents that an institution can temporarily access their current account data because it will deliver a better or quicker outcome than previously possible. 

“This can benefit consumers and businesses alike, whether applying for a loan, mortgage or credit card, the process can be improved via this exchange.”