Financial Management, Open Banking
Open banking is clearing the smoke around student loan data and creating next-gen innovation opportunities
For over 45 million Americans, the weight of unyielding student loan debt is a major cause of stress and anxiety, a barrier to homeownership and can be a lifelong impediment to building wealth. Nationwide, the total student debt level stands at a staggering $1.7 trillion. Managing that debt has proven to be complicated and inefficient for borrowers and lenders alike.
Bottom line: Access to consumer-permissioned student loan data presents a unique opportunity. Innovators can step in and create apps and build better services that leverage student loan data through Finicity’s open banking platform, to help consumers with student loan debt.
Introducing Normalized Student Loan Data
For fintech innovators, lenders, refinancers, employers and institutions of higher education, working with student loan data has been challenging. Until now, the data hasn’t been normalized. Higher learning institutions have used different naming conventions for data fields, making documentation harder to read, compare or translate. Lenders and servicers have to navigate a forest of screenshots, phone calls with lengthy hold times and unsecure paper documents in their efforts to verify loan information.
These time-consuming manual processes incur labor costs to lenders and servicers. This can cause stress, revenue loss, time loss and negatively impact the lender’s operational efficiency.
Finicity has normalized the data across data fields, vocabulary, naming conventions and applications of rules, resulting in a modernized ecosystem for all stakeholders through its open banking platform. This significantly reduces the time to market for your student loan solutions.
Innovation Platform Using Student Loan Data
Student loan data doesn’t have to be confusing or complicated. With Mastercard Open Banking (some services provided by Finicity, a Mastercard company), an optimized API call can help reduce costs, and is delivered in a formation that doesn’t require additional coding. Our API endpoints can yield the complete loan details, and the full payment details of a student loan account, including up to 24 months of transaction history.
99% Data Coverage
- Normalized, comprehensive data covering most student loan accounts. It’s delivered through our open banking platform, with connections to student loan accounts that include federal Direct Loans, FFEL & Perkins, and some of the largest private lenders and servicers (e.g. Aidvantage, Navient, Nelnet, Sallie Mae, Discover, Firstmark, Commonbond, LendKey, etc).
Quality of Data
- Extensive Loan Account Details: API calls to the Finicity open banking platform can yield a primary account, transactions by account, loan payment details, statements, account owner and much more. Data is aggregated at the three largest levels of the student loan hierarchy; student loan, student loan group and student loan account, while also being able to provide customer & institution-level details.
- Transaction lookback period has been extended to one year in order to accurately capture transaction additions or changes. Up to twenty-four months of transactions can be offered for an extended view of account history.
- Complementary data insight solutions with analytics of a borrower’s credits, debits and balances to deliver smarter credit decisioning.
- Reliable Uptime Data Monitoring: Multi-tier data integrity and student loan-specific data monitoring.
Create Winning Borrower Experiences
Innovators can quickly develop and scale new and improved financial services with Finicity’s open banking platform. Student loans are the second-largest debt sector in the United States. There is a massive opportunity to develop new apps and services to help individuals with student loan debt. Through partnering with our clients, Finicity’s open banking platform is powering solutions to help over 45 million Americans who carry student loan balances.
Some of the ways innovators can upgrade the borrower experience, using permissioned student loan data:
- Create frictionless onboarding and account setup for borrowers to apply for loans, set up accounts, manage repayment and distribute funding to students.
- Better data for better credit decisioning. It’s pretty simple. Student loan borrowers want a better experience. Lenders want the most accurate and real-time data for better credit decisioning. So we’ve combined the best data with smart insights to transform the lending experience.
- Finicity data powers leading personal finance management (PFM) apps. These tools allow borrowers to view, monitor and manage their debt in near real time by pulling smart, categorized and permissioned loan data into the app. If borrowers can easily understand their financial position and repayment options, they may reduce stress and more effectively manage their debt.
- Attracting and retaining the best talent in today’s job market is a challenge for any company. Leveraging permissioned student loan data, some employers are taking advantage of the SECURE 2.0 Act, creating benefits like 401k accounts that match student loan payments and direct matching of student loan payments back to the student loan.
- By using the account details endpoint, it’s possible to verify that a student is enrolled in at least half-time coursework by the National Student Loan Data System. Using this data, a rich field of possibility opens up for student-specific benefits. Discounts, rewards and loyalty programs can be built specifically for current students.
- Even the more administrative aspects of student loans can be modernized by open banking technology. Student borrowers can be offered the ability to easily and securely apply for federal programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness or an Income-Driven Repayment plan. No wading through W2s, paystubs and long, frustrating calls to student loan servicers. Quick and secure.
Step Into the Future
Break out of the spider web of paper documents, screenshots, phone calls and mismatched data. Replace countless lost hours of productivity with optimized API calls that offer the comprehensive, relevant, normalized data to build solutions on.
Innovate with us to create knowledge-based services that empower students, so they can manage, consolidate, refinance and repay their obligations with the level of transparency that they deserve.
Click here to learn more about our Student Loan Data. If you are ready to see this data in action, click here to request a demo.