UK first for Open Banking as debt management firm automates reviews
OPEN Banking technology has been incorporated by a debt management company to automate annual reviews for the first time in the UK.
Gregory Pennington, one of the UK’s longest established debt management companies, has integrated an Open Banking solution provided by Equifax in partnership with AccountScore, to speed up its customer financial reviews.
Customers of the debt management specialist will now be able to complete the regulatory required annual review and financial assessment by providing consent for the extraction of transactional data from their current account to populate the financial statement.
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Previously, the review would have been conducted over the telephone and would typically take up to an hour.
The move could be a boost for peer-to-peer lenders working with debt management companies who adopt similar technology as it could help speed up the recoveries process.
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“This is the first UK use case of Open Banking technology being harnessed for annual reviews by debt management companies,” Zowie Lees-Howell, financial institutions sales director at Equifax, said.
“It’s a great example of how Open Banking can be mutually beneficial for the service provider, Gregory Pennington, and the consumer.”
Deborah Ware, director at Gregory Pennington, said Open Banking would save the burden of lengthy calls make the review process more efficient.