Open Banking Solutions at Creditinfo
In 2020 Creditinfo Group decided to be part of the Open Banking initiative by starting to investigate the options of using customers’ bank account statements in their offering. The account information service is based on the PSD2 directive. For known reasons, it is not possible and acceptable to have access to customer bank account data without consent.
Creditinfo have tackled the opportunity in two different ways. In the Baltics and Iceland, the chosen route was to apply for an FSA licence to offer end-to-end customer account statements transfer from their home bank to a third party, from whom the customer applies for credit , e.g. car loan. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia namely due to the long and cost-intensive process of “passporting” CI’s Estonian license, the chosen route was collaboration with a local technical partner called Sokordia Tech.
A little bit more about above-mentioned two ways to offer Open Banking solutions in Creditinfo Group.
In 2021 Spring, Creditinfo Estonia received permission from the Financial Supervision Authority to start offering account information services in Estonia, which later in Autumn expanded to the markets of Latvia and Lithuania. Today, Creditinfo has been offering the account information service in the Baltic market for almost three years. Creditinfo have real-time access to the transaction data of customers of banks and financial institutions using a secure data transmission channel and customer consent.
In Spring 2024, Creditinfo Estonia finalised the Iceland licence application process from Estonian FSA and can officially offer account information service in Iceland.
Beside regulative and compliance part, Creditinfo also has full technical integration and capability in developing categorization when offering account informatoin service. With opportunity to access customers bank account data, the aim is to offer more transparent credit risk evaluation to customers and third parties, who find high value from the knowledge of their customers account information to make data-driven, intelligent credit and business decisions.
As mentioned above, Creditinfo also have Open Banking cooperation and partnership in the Czech Republic and Slovakia with fintech company Sokordia Tech, teaming up to capitalize on Creditinfo’s market position whilst leveraging Sokordia Tech’s AISP and PISP licenses and Open Banking services platform to provide PSD2/Open Banking services to several financial services clients in the market.
In the Czech Republic and Slovakia market, Creditinfo currently has 5 customers utilizing the Open Banking platform, processing more than 1.2 million open banking transactions per month. Depending on the specific requirements, pain points, and use case of the Client, Creditinfo has developed a “Categorization In-a-Box” , Multi-Service platform called Transaction Analysis Service replete with 40,000 pre-installed business rules that can sit atop and work with any Open Banking Open APIs in any country. The service is comprised of 6 unique methods/services (AIS+CIS+PIS) & PDF tools via one API as detailed below:
- PSD2parser: extracting raw data from PSD2 bank statements
- PSD2tags: tag each bank transaction with one to N identifying tags
- PDFparser: Extracting raw data from PDF bank statements
- PDFtags: Tag each bank transaction with one to N identification tags
- 1UnitPay: Verification PSD2 payment (the advantage is that the payment is made in one step with statement extraction)
- Bank Account Views: Repeated viewing of bank accounts without the need for customer re-authentication
Together with our partner Sokordia Tech, we currently have Open Banking APIs and are able to provide all these services under one single API for the following countries: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland.
Development work on the 3rd generation of the Transaction Analysis Service is currently in development, highlighted by:
- Deeper AI involvement in processes & rules & analysis
- Expansion of new online data inputs into transactional analytics
- Multi-language analytical tools
- GUI for clients to manage and report transactional analytics themselves
For more information, please visit: www.creditinfo.com
Authors:
Seth Marks – Regional Director Central, Eastern & Southern Europe, Creditinfo Group
Ivo Vallau – Open Banking Product Manager, Creditinfo Group
