The new platform, Clear Decision – which is powered by cloud infrastructure provider Render – helps lenders make more informed decisions based on customers’ individual financial circumstances, using a combination of credit reference and open banking data.
Its aim is to provide an enhanced picture of affordability and creditworthiness, which is of particular importance when assessing marginal credit applications.
Instead of relying on bureau data at the front end of a customer journey and only supplementing this with open banking data to inform marginal or borderline cases, Equifax’s platform will automate the process of combining the data – reducing manual underwriting time and errors.
Stephen Maitland, director of partnerships and strategic alliances at Equifax UK, said: “Lenders are facing increasing pressure to deliver better consumer outcomes, so establishing a deeper understanding of customers’ affordability is increasingly important, particularly in the case of marginal lending decisions.
“There remains a significant opportunity across the industry to take better advantage of open banking data to aid decision-making, and this new platform will help improve operational efficiency, broaden financial inclusion and enable lenders to approve more customers with confidence.”
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