Through Credas’ Open Banking module, customers will be able to connect with account providers and provide financial statements to their estate agents, mortgage provider or conveyancers in a few clicks.
The reports also contain summarised data such as the source and type of income, enabling firms to identify suspicious transactions.
Partnering with Equifax, Credas has created a configurable service, meaning customers can choose between taking the ‘off the shelf’ version or creating their own. The Credas Bank Account Analysis will not only download transaction history but categorise the transactions into a report which will highlight any high-risk spending (such as gambling or debt repayments), and disposable income and provide affordability insights.
By using Open Banking, Credas aims to reduce the amount of time it takes for homebuyers to provide genuine financial statements to their agent or solicitor.
As many firms are still relying on outdated and unreliable methods to verify Source and Proof of Funds, companies can be put at risk with fake bank statements easily obtainable online. Some firms attempt to counter this by requesting all statements are verified in branch which can cause delays in the homebuying process.
In today’s world, financial services firms perform a series of complex checks to validate a customer’s identity to deliver any financial service or product. These checks are repetitive and not necessarily streamlined to be reused across multiple business areas within the same organisation. As a result, the customer’s identity attributes are created repeatedly but remain largely unexploited. Exposing these attributes over secure open APIs with the consent of the customer will not only facilitate data sharing within the organisation, but also enable cross-industry use cases such as age verification from which other businesses can benefit.
As the Open Banking digital-identity capabilities mature over time, they can unlock multiple benefits for all parties. One of these advantages is proving identity to access any financial or non-financial products and services without needing to go through another onboarding process or to present a physical identity document. Besides, customers can be in control of which identity information to share with whom, sharing only the personal-identity data they choose based on their comfort levels around security and privacy.
According to a survey of 1,201 UK homebuyers carried out on behalf of identity verification provider Credas, nearly a third (30%) said their estate agent did not ask to see proof of residence, such as a utility bill.
When it came to a lawyer seeking proof of identification once a sale got underway, 13% of buyers surveyed said their lawyer or solicitor never asked to see an ID, and 18% said their mortgage brokers hadn’t asked either.
An identity check can be completed with a passport or a driving licence. Other documents that can be used to verify identity include biometric residence permit, national identity card, or a combination of papers such as council tax bills, bank statements, and utility bills. It can also be done via a KBV, where a number of questions are asked based on personal information from their credit file.
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