Finicity is part of the Mastercard family. Our open banking platform provides the financial data you need.

Finicity’s open banking platform delivers consumer-permissioned data, the foundation of a more comprehensive, more accurate risk assessment. Lenders need to enhance their assessment capabilities in order to remedy these five problems in today’s credit decisioning market:

Download our 5 Key Problems in Credit Decisioning and How Open Banking Solves Them eBook to learn more.

Open banking data augments the foundation of credit histories and credit scores by providing real-time insights into cash flow, stable income and the actual room in someone’s monthly budget to afford a loan or a new purchase.

Millions of Americans have thin credit files meaning they don’t have enough data in the credit bureaus to even create a score. By looking at data from their bank account, lenders can determine if they are able to to pay back a loan based on income and expenses, not the lack of data.

Above all, consumer-permissioned data helps to empower consumers with control over their data, access to better financial products and a simple way to connect with fintech apps or financial services.

If you’re ready to learn how Finicity’s open banking platform can improve your credit decisioning experience for you and your borrowers, schedule a demo today.

Pentadata announced a partnership with Finicity to help developers crate apps that delive value-added services to merchants and consumers through payment card data. Consumers can permission acces to their data to make payments through apps, receive targeted discounts, and enable clients to present targeted digital offers to their members. Through the partnership, Pentadata customers can use account owner information, transaction aggregation and ACH solutions as part of Fincity’s Lend, Pay and Manage solutions. The data will help drive a better experience for millions of loyalty program members of Pentadata customers that include fintech apps, merchants and travel-related companies.

You can read the full press release here.

Finicity’s SVP of Enterprise & Strategic Sales Lynn Sheck was named to HousingWire’s 2021 Women of Influence list. The honor recognizes Sheck as one of the most influential women in leadership in the housing economy. Sheck’s efforts are helping to transform the mortgage experience through Finicity’s open banking platform, specifically the new Mortgage Verification Service product. You can read why she received the honor at HousingWire and you can see the full list of honorees.

Latest API integration enables leading digital bank’s customers to securely connect to approved third-party apps and accounts

PASADENA, Calif. — July 21, 2021 — Finicity, a Mastercard company and leading provider of open banking solutions, announced today that it has signed a data access agreement with Green Dot (NYSE: GDOT), a digital bank and fintech focused on delivering trusted, best-in-class banking and payment solutions that seamlessly connect people to their money. 

“We’re excited to announce Green Dot as the next in our data access agreements lineup,” said Steve Smith, CEO of Finicity. “The company is a big proponent of client empowerment, giving their banking clients the control to utilize their financial data to benefit them. This aligns well with Finicity’s mission to bring greater transparency to consumers to improve financial health and inclusion.”

The Finicity direct API experience will first be available through Green Dot’s flagship digital bank GO2bank and will allow customers to link their accounts to third-party apps that use Finicity’s secure data network and financial data – further enabling them to connect, manage and move their money in a secure and seamless environment. 

“This integration enables customers to put their financial data to work for them by offering secure, seamless connections to tools and features that can have a meaningful impact,” said Abhijit Chaudhary, SVP and GM, Direct to Consumer Products, Green Dot. “The majority of Americans, and particularly low- to moderate-income consumers, can benefit from tools that help them feel more in control and connected to their money, and our partnership with Finicity is an exciting step in that direction.”

Through this agreement, Finicity is extending its leadership in direct data access through the use of an application programming interface (API). Finicity’s signed data access agreements with many of the nation’s largest financial institutions, credit card companies, and wealth management institutions currently cover 63% of their open banking platform traffic with direct API access. In addition, Finicity works with many of the most popular PFM (personal financial management) tools, as well as the largest lenders and most innovative payment providers, among other services.

To learn more about Finicity data services and their commitment to fast, reliable, and high-quality data, visit www.finicity.com. 

About Finicity

Finicity, a Mastercard company, helps individuals, families, and organizations make smarter financial decisions through its safe and secure access to fast, high-quality data. The company provides a proven and trusted open banking platform that puts consumers in control of their financial data, transforming the way we experience money for everything from budgeting and payments to investing and lending. Finicity partners with influential financial institutions and disruptive fintech providers alike to give consumers a leg up in a complicated financial world, helping to improve financial literacy, expanding financial inclusion, and ultimately leading to better financial outcomes. Finicity is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. To learn more or test drive its API, visit www.finicity.com. 

About Green Dot

Green Dot Corporation (NYSE: GDOT) is a financial technology and registered bank holding company committed to transforming the way people and businesses manage and move money, and making financial wellbeing and empowerment more accessible for all. Green Dot’s proprietary technology enables faster, more efficient electronic payments and money management, powering intuitive and seamless ways for people to spend, send, control and save their money. Through its retail and direct bank, Green Dot offers a broad set of financial products to consumers and businesses including debit, prepaid, checking, credit and payroll cards, as well as robust money processing services, tax refunds, cash deposits and disbursements. The company’s Banking as a Service (“BaaS”) platform enables a growing list of America’s most prominent consumer and technology companies to design and deploy their own customized banking and money movement solutions for customers and partners in the US and internationally. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Pasadena, CA, Green Dot has served more than 33 million customers directly, and now operates primarily as a “branchless bank” with more than 90,000 retail distribution locations nationwide. Green Dot Bank is a subsidiary of Green Dot Corporation and member of the FDIC. For more information about Green Dot’s products and services, please visit www.greendot.com.

You need to move money, but with that comes risk. How do you know a customer has enough funds available in their account? The answer: balance checks. With balance checks, you can guarantee that a customer has sufficient funds to facilitate confident money movement. And with live balance checks, you can get the most accurate, most up-to-date account information. Let’s dig deeper into how that works.

What Are Balance Checks?

Many payment solutions rely on balance checks to ensure that an account has the funds necessary to make a payment. For card payments, this comes in the form of a network authorization. For ACH transfers, balance checks help mitigate financial risks like payment failures, overdraft fees, and NSF fees, all of which can happen if an account holder tries to move money they don’t have. 

Why Implement Balance Checks?

Balance checks deliver visibility into a customer’s bank account balance so payment facilitators can move money confidently and mitigate risk. Implementing balance checks into your workflow can produce benefits like:

Altogether, balance checks help payment facilitators build better experiences for consumers that in turn yield better business outcomes.

How Finicity Enables Live Balance Checks for Streamlined, Lower-risk Account Funding

As part of our Finicity Pay solution set, we offer several balance check options so that payment facilitators can enhance the payment experience and move money confidently. Some balance checks are cached, meaning that you receive lightning fast account balance data with timestamps. For the greatest accuracy, live balance checks deliver real-time, instant balance information at the moment of the request. This might be ideal for higher value or riskier payments.

Our live balance call delivers real-time balance information (both cleared balance and available balance) complete with time stamps directly from a consumer’s financial institution. And thanks to the speed of our high-quality data connections, you can get that important balance information in seconds.

For use cases that may not require a live balance check, we also offer balance checks that occur throughout the day at regular intervals so you can retrieve lightning fast results.

These balance check solutions rely on our open banking platform, which is founded on secure data connections that ensure a seamless, low-friction experience, and consumers permissioning their data for their use. At Finicity, we empower the consumer to benefit from their financial data. That means they remain in control of their data and get a trustworthy experience.

Live balance checks aren’t the only payment-experience-improving solutions that Finicity offers. To complement live balance checks, our Finicity Pay solution set also enables you to verify:

Live balance checks are the key to more successful, more confident money movement. To see Finicity’s instant balance insights in action, request a demo today.

Navy Federal Credit Union’s VP of omni-channel strategy and innovation Ryan Fairley discusses APIs, personal data and how open banking benefits members so they can control their personal information, manage how its accessed by external parties like third-party apps, and receive more transparency into the data sharing and open banking process.

Navy Federal recently signed its first data sharing agreement with open banking platform provider,  Finicity, a Mastercard® company. This allows Navy Federal customers to securely link their accounts to applications that use Finicity’s open banking platform.

You can read the full post Putting you in control of your personal data with a new API on the Navy Federal site.

The White House issued a directive, wanting to make it easier and more cost effective for consumers to switch banks. President Biden’s office on Friday said it “encourages the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to issue rules allowing customers to download their banking data and take it with them” from bank to bank. The CFPB has had the authority to write rules like this since the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. What the next steps look like for both financial institutions and consumers going forward.

Read the full article (behind a paywall).

While the chaos of 2020 wreaked havoc in many industries, the housing and mortgage markets boomed. Mortgage rates set 15 records in a single year as they dropped, encouraging equally record-breaking volume. In mid-December, mortgage applications were 26% higher than the previous year, while refinancing applications were up 105% from 2019. With rates still low, demand remains high, even with climbing costs and low inventory. On top of all the widespread adaptation required last year across the board, lenders have been sprinting to keep up with this high demand. The solution? Accelerated digitization of the lending process.

And artificial intelligence (AI) is opening the door to even more possibilities.

New Trends In The Mortgage Lending Market

Volume trends in the mortgage lending market are continuing in 2021. Bankrate reported that the slowdown usually experienced by the market in the winter was far less noticeable this year, which implies that the first quarters of ‘21 will continue to see high demand. 

Low rates haven’t been the only factor driving high mortgage lending volume. As social distancing became the norm across much of the economy, employees worked from home. And even as coronavirus cases dropped in some areas, many companies announced a transition to long-term and even permanent work-from-home. This transformation has encouraged some employees, who were previously restrained by a daily commute, to move into a new home. As Bankrate puts it, “demand is especially high in neighborhoods outside of downtown city cores, as increasing work from home and virtual learning requirements have driven many homeowners to favor space over on-the-doorstep amenities.”

High demand, for all its reasons, is butting up against rising costs and low inventory. Low rates appear to be sufficient to encourage continued sales, despite median home prices now rising above $340,000. This combination of factors means that we’re likely to see a competitive housing market persist over the coming months.

On top of factors driving high demand, other trends in the mortgage lending market are fostering change. For example, social distancing, quarantines, and lockdowns increased consumer adoption of digital and remote solutions. US ecommerce sales jumped 37% by Q3 2020. Utilization of telemedicine and remote diagnostics increased. Remote education relied on digital learning solutions, as well as virtual communication tools like Zoom. Consumers, especially digital natives, were already expecting and becoming accustomed to digital solutions in many industries. Why wouldn’t they expect the same in mortgage lending?

The Digital Mortgage: How Mortgage Companies Are Adapting

With demand and market competition so hot, lenders are looking for ways to streamline their processes and keep up with consumers and potential homebuyers. The solution? Digital adoption. 

In this high-demand mortgage lending market, mortgage companies may need one thing above all else: time. They need to cut cycle times, allowing for more loans to be processed. They need to save borrowers time to keep them satisfied. Traditional paper-based mortgage processes tend to take more time and involve more friction. Digital mortgages, on the other hand, streamline not only the mortgage application, but the entire lending process, removing high-friction back-and-forth with borrowers through digital verification solutions.

Digital verification solutions enable mortgage companies to adapt to high volumes and empower consumers along the way. Where paper-based verifications require borrowers to dig up old documents to verify creditworthiness, digital solutions powered by open banking, AI, and consumer-permissioned data, allow borrowers to quickly and securely share all the financial data necessary to get them a loan. Digital verifications enable mortgage lenders to automate and streamline workflows, all while delivering borrowers with a convenient, simple, digital-first experience. 

In addition to challenges revolving around time, today’s mortgage lenders are facing another issue in a physically-distanced world: trust. Borrowers are frequently navigating the mortgage application process or refinancing remotely, without meeting agents, sellers, buyers, and loan originators. Lenders can empower borrowers with a consumer-centric experience that enables them to control and benefit from their financial data. Layer that with secure, consumer-centric data sharing principles and protocols and lenders can build with borrowers valuable relationships founded on trust.

Some mortgage companies implement a digital solution here and there, but there’s a difference between doing digital and being digital. Any digital solution will of course help streamline processes and update workflows, but a completely digital workflow informed by a company-wide digital-first strategy enhances mortgage companies with consumer-first experiences that accelerate growth and increase ROI. 

Why High Demand For Mortgages Needs A Digital Mortgage Solution

Digital mortgage solutions streamline the verification process and, by extension, the entire origination process. That streamlining cuts time from the origination and leaves more time to process more loans. A necessity in today’s high-demand market. As Allen Taylor of Lending Times notes, leveraging digital solutions and AI models will “likely drive the greatest overall efficiencies, both reducing costs and boosting revenues. This enhanced efficiency can be used to drive competitive position and ultimately higher profits.”

As purchase volume and demand rises, so do chances of fraud and risk. Fortunately, digital mortgage solutions reduce fraud and overall risk by connecting directly to secure financial institutions and getting the most accurate data from the most reliable sources. 

How Digital Verification Is Facilitated By AI

The digital verification enabling streamlined digital mortgage owes part of its efficiency to artificial intelligence. This doesn’t mean that Watson or Alexa are performing your digital income verification. Instead, artificial intelligence leverages machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks to mimic human intelligence and predict, optimize, and automate tasks that were once performed manually. 

As IBM explains, “Perhaps the easiest way to think about artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning is to think of them like Russian nesting dolls. Each is essentially a component of the prior term.” In brief, fundamental terms, here’s more on each AI component:

In mortgage lending specifically, AI performs income, employment, and asset verification after a lender connects to a borrower’s bank accounts following a consumer permissioning experience. Once the consumer gives the borrower permission to access their financial data, that data enters the AI’s machine learning algorithm and the AI outputs information based on the task. For example, digital income verification involves the AI recognizing an income stream from financial transactions, and cleaning and categorizing data for a clear output that displays a borrower’s income situation.

Digital verification, powered by AI, automates what loan officers and underwriters once had to do manually. That automation enables lenders to, according to Forbes, “reduce underwriting overhead and delays, which increases profits per loan.” In fact, Fannie Mae has found that digital, AI solutions save up to 8 days for asset validation and up to 12 days for income and employment validation. Ultimately, AI-powered digital verification enhances the entire lending process, delivering a more streamlined experience for customers, and reducing risk while increasing ROI for lenders.

Finicity Can Help Your Mortgage Company Improve Their Process: Here’s How

Through our Finicity Lend solution set, we leverage AI capabilities to help lenders meet high demand. Our open banking platform, powered in part by artificial intelligence, identifies tradestreams in consumer-permissioned financial data and delivers cleaned data, ranked by confidence, in easy-to-read reports to lenders. Finicity Lend delivers valuable real-time data insights on:

These data solutions not only streamline the lending process and better enable lenders to meet high demand, but they also reduce risk and improve loans by enhancing decisioning. Finicity’s real-time data connections ensure high accuracy so that you get the clearest picture of a borrower’s financial situation. 

And in addition to the standard verification of income, employment, and assets, lenders can also get a more comprehensive view of a borrower with Cash Flow analytics. Cash Flow leverages artificial intelligence to identify tradestreams not traditionally considered in risk assessment, but that enhance a lender’s understanding of a borrower’s financial habits with a clear view of how money moves in and out of borrower accounts.

We want to make sure you get the most out of Finicity Lend and that your mortgage company can help its lending process reach its greatest potential. To that end, we offer best practices training to facilitate a smooth integration of Finicity solutions into mortgage platforms and an effective transition to a fully-digital mortgage process. We’re not just here to offer products; we’re here to be a resource so you can get the best results.

Artificial intelligence is helping lenders integrate digital mortgage solutions that don’t just meet high demand, but dominate it. With the all-star team-up of AI and open banking platforms, consumers can benefit from their financial data and increase their chances of getting a home loan, and lenders can enjoy enhanced decisioning and ROI, as well as an innovative workflow that hones their competitive edge. Don’t take our word for it. Check out Finicity Lend and see for yourself what AI can do for you.

President Joe Biden signed executive orders Friday aimed at promoting U.S. competition by providing more scrutiny of bank mergers and giving consumers greater control over their financial data. The order includes support for open banking regulations, allowing data sharing among financial services companies to foster a more convenient and transparent consumer experience. The White House said the order will “make it easier and cheaper to switch banks by requiring banks to allow customers to take their financial transaction data with them to a competitor.”

You can read about it at Banking Dive.

SimpleNexus announced an integration with Finicity’s Mortgage Verification Service (MVS) that allows lenders to streamline the verification of applicants’ assets, income and employment using a single embedded service.

Finicity launched MVS in February. The service leverages consumer-permissioned bank and payroll data to provide accurate, real-time insight into a borrower’s current assets, income and employment in minutes, without any paperwork. MVS has helped lenders shave up to 12 days off the origination process and is accepted by both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, making loans eligible for rep and warrant relief.

SimpleNexus is the first mortgage point-of-sale (POS) platform to offer Finicity’s MVS as an integrated solution. Without ever leaving the SimpleNexus mobile app, borrowers can use MVS to complete asset, income and employment verification in a few simple steps that take just minutes to complete. Lenders receive validated payroll, paystub and bank account data in real time and can refresh the data within 10 days of the loan closing as needed to fulfill investor requirements.

Read the full release here.