TotallyMoney integrates open banking with Bud to unlock customer data for better borrowing
The partnership will help customers understand their affordability position, what makes them attractive to lenders and receive personalised, real-time updates
In turn, lenders will benefit from more accurate eligibility scoring and decision making
The pandemic has increased those ‘just about managing’ to c. 25 million UK adults – with the rising cost-of-living pressurising millions more
TotallyMoney, the credit app focused on the ‘under-served’, has chosen Bud’s open banking platform for a partnership which will help improve access to credit approvals for its customers as the cost-of-living crisis intensifies.
The partnership will harness live open banking data, bringing it together with credit report, eligibility and TotallyMoney’s own product data. With inflation at its highest level in 30 years causing millions to eat into their savings and at risk of missing payments, this will help customers understand their affordability position and what makes them attractive to lenders.
TotallyMoney customers are already able to benefit from its Dynamic Actions, which show them exactly what they can do next to improve their eligibility for credit, intelligently ranked by impact. This means completing the actions at the top of the list will be the fastest way to improve the credit offers. Now, open banking data will supercharge this personalisation with better insights and analysis, showing them what might be holding them back from receiving better offers.
At the same time, it will benefit TotallyMoney’s lending partners, aiding more accurate eligibility scoring and lending decisions to drive better outcomes on both sides.
The announcement comes shortly after TotallyMoney announced new investment of £9 million in the business, and a milestone of four million customers in November. With a unique focus on those it believes are under-served by mainstream finance and other fintech companies, the pandemic has seen its potential audience base grow to c. 25 million UK adults. Now, the cost-of-living crisis has placed millions more in this position.
Alastair Douglas, CEO of TotallyMoney said:
“We’re at a really exciting tipping point. Too often in the credit market, data works against people, so they are matched with the wrong products or declined altogether.
“Open banking is a huge opportunity, and our partnership will bring this data into the lending ecosystem, enabling deeper insights for customers into their financial position and enabling better borrowing habits. This will empower our customers to step from ‘just about managing’ to moving their finances forward.”
Ed Maslaveckas, CEO of Bud said:
“When we founded Bud, it was because we thought being great with money should be easier than it is. Enabling fair access to credit is a crucial part of that process and is one of the many areas where open banking will fundamentally change the way we think about our finances.”
About Bud Financial
Founded in 2015 because we believed that being great with money should be easy, Bud empowers large institutions to better serve their customers. We do this by providing easy access to transaction data, then adding context and insights to it through our proprietary AI platform.
Our APIs provide banks and other financial companies with the key capabilities they need in order to create meaningful new features for their customers. They provide access to financial data through open banking, understanding of that data through the industry’s most intelligent enrichment layer and the capacity to act on the insight using both a payments platform and an ecosystem of fintech products that are available to distribute through APIs.
Whether the platform is set to tackling the loyalty penalty by enabling our bank clients to build auto-switching services for people who are overpaying on utility bills, or helping people with thin credit files to get fair access to credit by sharing their history of making rent payments with CRAs, we are driven by a mission to make managing money simpler, wherever and however people want to do it.
Under a single contract, Bud provides open banking access, data intelligence, the capacity to distribute third party products and the capability to make and receive payments, all from within our clients’ apps and services.
