Finicity is unveiling a new tool set this week. The new solution, Finicity Lend, promises to accelerate lenders’ decisioning processes by tapping into the power of open banking.
The tools will help lenders with the credit decisioning process by enabling prospective borrowers to permission their data to be used during underwriting. Ultimately, Finicity anticipates the consumer-provided data will offer lenders data in real-time and lead to more accurate decisions.
“Our new Finicity Lend integrated solution set will complement the current credit rating system while leveraging the tremendous advantages of open banking to create an industry standard for assessing a borrower’s ability to manage a loan going forward,” said Finicity CEO and Co-founder Steve Smith. “Real-time, permissioned data from multiple financial accounts is the lifeblood of our secure open banking platform, and empowers consumers to make better financial decisions, to mitigate risk for lenders and can increase overall financial inclusion.”
Along with the data permissioning aspect of Finicity Lend, the toolset offers a host of other capabilities. Among those are Cash Flow Analytics, CRA Data Services, and Payroll Data, which leverage the data intelligence layer of the company’s open banking platform.
Cash Flow Analytics uses an automated process to look at an applicant’s financial account data to glean insights about their cash flow. Finicity has positioned itself as a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) to ensure that the consumer-permissioned data meets the legal requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The move also places more control in the hands of the customer by offering them the ability to review, dispute, and correct any inaccurate information. Finally, the company has added ADP as a payroll data source to enhance its ability to verify income and employment details (with the prospective borrower’s permission, of course).
Placing the consumer in control of their data is one of the core principles of the open banking initiative. Finicity has always been a proponent of open banking. The company is a founding member of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), an organization that helps establish industry standards for open banking in North America.
Earlier this year Finicity agreed to be acquired by Mastercard for $825 million. The deal has yet to be finalized.
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