To be competitive in an era of accelerating consumer expectations, deploying a seamless application experience for personal lending, mortgage, tenant screening and other use cases is a must. Slower, resource-laden manual processes invite higher consumer drop-off rates, introduce inefficiencies and can be vulnerable to fraudsters.
Mastercard Open Banking, provided by Finicity, a Mastercard company, is equipping its customers with the capabilities to deliver smarter and more efficient digital lending experiences. With the expansion of its Verification of Income and Employment (VOIE) solution to include credentialed payroll, Mastercard Open Banking enables consumers to permission access to their payroll account data, mitigating the need to collect income documentation.
A more efficient digital experience within the loan application process is precisely what open banking customers need – and credentialed payroll delivers a seamless, secure income and employment verification process, and reliable data at speed. The latest VOIE innovation populates consumer-permissioned data directly into the correct fields, creating a fast, secure digital experience that can boost profitability while making life easier for your applicants and employees.
Strong partnerships that drive industry-leading innovations
Mastercard Open Banking teamed up with industry-leading payroll data aggregator Argyle to power this expanded VOIE solution. With 90%+ coverage of the U.S. workforce, financial institutions can now digitally verify an applicant’s income and employment in just moments.
“We’re excited to partner with Mastercard Open Banking to make digital verification of income and employment widely available through our trusted network of consumer-permissioned connections,” said Brian Geary, COO at Argyle. “Together, we are creating smarter lending experiences, free from time-consuming manual touchpoints while achieving faster and more accurate verifications,” he added. The combined capabilities of Mastercard Open Banking and Argyle are driving VOIE to be an efficient, flexible solution that comes in at a much more affordable price point than other income and employment verification options, poised to benefit financial institutions and consumers alike.
“Mastercard Open Banking’s new credentialed payroll enhancement was one of the simplest product launches we have done,” said Josh Cilman, EVP at Intercoastal Mortgage. “The new experience integrated smoothly into our existing processes with no impact to loan processing workflows and an efficient borrower experience. We are excited to digitize our loan application experience with a much more cost-effective way to verify income and employment.”
Multiple verification solutions to fit your business
Credentialed payroll is just the latest addition to Mastercard Open Banking’s growing list of digital income and employment verification solutions for smarter and faster decisioning.
Mastercard Open Banking’s Deposit Income verification solution analyzes direct deposit streams from the consumer’s permissioned bank account data to identify an applicant’s income.
Freddie Mac launched Loan Product Advisor® (LPASM) asset and income modeler (AIM) for income using direct deposits in March 2022 with Mastercard Open Banking as an initial service provider. In March 2024, Fannie Mae announced general availability of Deposit Income as part of their Desktop Underwriter (DU®) validation service. These solutions help streamline the mortgage origination process for lenders and homebuyers while expanding opportunities for home ownership.
Mastercard Open Banking solutions are used by financial institutions and decision makers in varied use cases, including mortgage lenders, tenant screeners, personal lenders, credit card issuers and more. Credentialed payroll and Deposit Income solutions provide financial institutions with the high conversion, affordable income, and employment solutions they seek.
Bank account and payroll account data can be used independently or in combination to enhance the customer experience depending on the institution’s needs and workflows.
Partner with Mastercard to create better consumer experiences
The Mastercard Open Banking platform delivers next-generation financial experiences that delight consumers. The platform serves as a one-stop shop for digital verifications, with the capabilities to verify assets, balances, income, employment, cash flow and much more, seamlessly and at scale. Credentialed payroll and Deposit Income solutions are available today through Mastercard Open Banking’s lending solutions.
The next generation wants control over their data for a more transparent lending experience
Having grown up with the internet, smart phones, and social media, young Millennials and Gen-Z borrowers are particularly savvy about using their digital footprints for their own benefit.
They embrace technology to streamline everyday tasks and they want to make informed decisions about transactions. As they increase their presence in the workforce, they are becoming the generations poised to drive the future of lending.
When Mastercard surveyed 7,600 consumers across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany and Spain about their recent financial experiences, young people’s voices came through: They want a more transparent, simpler, digitally-enabled lending process.
And open banking can make this a reality. Using secure APIs, advanced data analytics, and machine learning, open banking technology allows consumers to safely share their financial data, giving a more up-to-date and holistic view of their ability to repay a loan or afford a line of credit.
Most borrowers are already on board. According to our survey, 77% of those ages 45 to 60 and 68% of those over 60 are willing to grant access to their banking data to secure a credit or loan. Among respondents 18 to 29, the number shoots up to 84%.
Nearly 60% of younger customers have already linked their accounts while applying for a loan. And, as digital natives, nine out of ten would prefer a loan option with a digital application or approval process.
The consumer base is changing, opening a window for the industry to evolve in step. Today’s borrowers are calling for a new, digital-first era of lending, giving applicants more control over the information used to determine their creditworthiness.
By allowing consumers to share access to their financial data, open banking can provides a current view of their ability to repay a loan or afford a line of credit for more transparent lending decisions – and a more financially inclusive economy.
Younger borrowers are embracing digital lending
Read more about the future of lending in Mastercard’s Lend Report here.
How open banking paints a more nuanced picture of borrowers
Even in the best economic circumstances, loans are often a necessity, especially for critical purchases like homes and cars.
For some insight into the lending landscape, Mastercard surveyed 7,600 consumers across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany and Spain about their recent financial experiences.
The upshot: 89% have been adversely affected by economic pressures, and nearly half are struggling to get the loans and credit they need.
Traditional credit scores do not always reflect an applicant’s ability to make payments. Individuals with thin or no credit history can struggle to qualify for credit. Young adults on their own for the first time, gig workers who deal mostly in cash, new Americans and retirees with a single credit card and no loans can struggle to qualify for leases, credit cards and mobile phone contracts.
To most consumers, change is overdue — 87% believe the decisioning process should make it easier for responsible borrowers to prove their ability to repay.
Open banking could help provide that missing piece. By choosing to share their bank account data, applicants can paint a more complete picture of who they are. Real-time insights into their accounts — such as a thin credit borrower’s biweekly deposits, cash flow or consistent payments for bills like utilities — offer an up to date, more comprehensive view of their financial health.
This shift in consumer mindset opens new horizons for lenders, allowing them to champion more inclusive processes.
Open banking has the potential to accommodate millions of thin-credit applicants who have previously had difficulties accessing the benefits of the financial system. Consumers have spoken. They want the next evolution of lending to prioritize transparency, accessibility and empowerment for consumers worldwide to build a more inclusive digital economy where everyone thrives.
Digital lending is on the rise
The data revealed in Mastercard’s Lend Report shows global consumer support for a more transparent, digital-first approach to lending. Read more about the future of lending in Mastercard’s Lend Report here.
The future of digital finance is evolving, and it’s happening just in time
Over the last few years, the move to digital finance has accelerated. Consumers are adopting emerging financial apps and services, empowering them to take control of their financial health. The same technological leaps that are enhancing payments, financial management and banking are also changing lending for the better, and they couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.
That’s because consumers are feeling the impact of economic uncertainty and worry about the effect that it may have on them. In a 2023 survey, Mastercard spoke to 7,600 consumers across the United States, Canada, the U.K., Australia, France, Germany and Spain about their recent financial experiences.
Over 89% of respondents say that they’ve been negatively affected by economic uncertainty.
At the same time, whether they’re making big purchases like homes or handling everyday needs like transportation or food, consumers worry that they won’t be able to borrow what they need.
Open banking data can help consumers get to the bottom of these challenges.
For starters, open banking allows consumers to permission access to their bank account, allowing lenders to augment their credit decisioning models with real time information that gives a better view of the consumer’s ability to repay a loan. That’s important because 95% of those who have been denied a loan in the past two years want more insights into the lending process. People are willing to share secure access to their bank account data, if it means better interest rates, instant approval for a loan, improved chances of being approved for a credit card or to secure an increase in the limit on a credit card.
Lenders benefit, too. By augmenting traditional credit models with open banking, they can improve operational efficiencies, lower costs and create innovative new lending models that can give consumers the credit they deserve, when they need it.
The world is going digital
The data revealed in Mastercard’s Lend Report shows global consumer support for a more transparent, digital-first approach to lending. Read more about the future of lending in Mastercard’s Lend Report here.
Give consumers a priceless asset: more time. Endless errands, work tasks and countless obligations big and small chip away at their free time and fill their schedules. Applying for a loan shouldn’t add to that.
To power a faster, better mortgage experience for consumers, Freddie Mac’s Loan Product Advisor asset and income modeler (AIM) continues to evolve, now including paystub data in addition to direct deposit data for income assessment. These cost-saving efficiencies provide increased rep and warrant coverage while continuing to meet Freddie Mac’s strong credit underwriting standards.
Open banking drives new mortgage capabilities
Using consumer-permissioned data from trusted third-party providers like Mastercard (with some services delivered through Finicity, a Mastercard company), direct deposit plus paystub increases the confidence in income calculations by matching digitized paystub data to borrower direct deposit history sourced from trusted providers.
Mortgage Verification Service (MVS) supports this new AIM capability by providing direct deposit transaction data paired with digitized paystub data to fuel this innovative, data-driven approach. It identifies the income stream that matches the paystub, delivering accurate risk assessment results.
Assets, income and employment verifications are vital to mortgage lenders looking to verify borrowers’ finances. However, between unreliable results, miscommunications and paperchases, verifying assets, employment and income can be cumbersome. MVS helps borrowers get faster approvals with fewer conditions up front, allowing them to close and move into their homes faster.
“Partnering with Mastercard ensures we can deliver the best tools and insights the industry has to offer. This collaboration will assist lenders with quickly and easily obtaining income verification.”
Daniel Miller, Freddie Mac Single-Family Director of Strategic Technology Partnerships
MVS can help lenders:
- More easily assess borrower capacity/automate income calculations
- Reduce frustrations caused by paper submissions and re-asking for documentation to verify assets, income and employment
- Remove subjectivity and manual errors in processing and underwriting
- Lower risk and probability of fraudulent activity
- Increase referrals by providing a better borrower experience
Efficient assessment
AIM leverages consumer-permissioned data from open banking providers like Mastercard to better identify pay deposits using accurate and verifiable data that meets Freddie Mac’s underwriting standards. Lenders can automate the manual processes of assessing borrower assets, income and employment. This can improve the success rates for identifying income and employment by reading information provided on a paystub and verifying income transactions within a borrower’s bank account.
“Partnering with Mastercard ensures we can deliver the best tools and insights the industry has to offer,” said Daniel Miller, Freddie Mac Single-Family Director of Strategic Technology Partnerships. “This collaboration will assist lenders with quickly and easily obtaining income verification.”
How it works
Previously, direct deposits to a consumer’s bank account would qualify for rep and warrant assessment. With enhanced direct deposit and paystub capabilities, a borrower or a loan officer can upload a paystub and the technology will match the data on that paystub with the deposits from the borrower’s asset report, boosting the rep and warranty success rates and income gross-up.
The asset report can include 24 months of direct deposit transactional history and also includes income streams identified by the open banking platform. Now, with the added paystub capability, Mastercard can add a paystub report that can provide greater success assessing income through direct deposits.
The paystub report generated through MVS has two sections; the top section includes digitized paystub information. The bottom section is up to 24 months of income stream credit transactions only. These income streams are reconciled with the deposits shown on the asset report.
As an added bonus, the reduced cost of implementing MVS is reflected directly in the balance sheet. On average, up to 7 days can be cut off the processing time for each loan. The hours formerly spent by loan officers chasing down borrower documents are invested in higher-return work activities such as marketing and sales to drive additional loans. The new AIM capability will be available to Freddie Mac-approved Sellers using Loan Product Advisor beginning June 7, 2023. MVS is available via direct integration and ecosystem integrations including SimpleNexus & ICE Technology and Order Reports Service in the Client Hub today.
Want to elevate your efficiency while enhancing the customer lending journey? Get started today.
Loanspark partnered with world-leading tech brands Mastercard, Middesk, and LexisNexis to enhance, speed up, and secure service delivery for its co-branded partners and their business customers.
A partnership with Mastercard enables Loanspark to leverage Mastercard’s open banking platform, with some services delivered through its subsidiary, Finicity, allowing businesses to establish direct consumer-permissioned connections with their customers’ bank accounts. This enables SMB owners to submit financial information securely and easily while focusing on running their business, and in turn allowing Loanspark to make better credit decisions by quickly verifying the borrower’s financial details. Accurate borrower information minimizes the lending risks and increases accuracy and speed of funds for SMBs.
“Small businesses are increasingly looking for greater choice in how they borrow, pay and manage their finances. Partnering with organizations like Loanspark provides small businesses with a streamlined process to gain access to capital and putting their financial worries at ease.”
Andy Sheehan, EVP, US Open Banking, Mastercard.
Read more about this partnership here.
Today, Mastercard is announcing that it has added advanced analytics to its Open Banking platform delivered by its subsidiary, Finicity in the U.S. These analytics can help lenders manage their risk profiles while also adding diverse and inclusive credit models for small business loans as well as ongoing monitoring and expansion of credit card lines.
“Small businesses are increasingly looking for greater choice in how they borrow, pay and manage their finances,” said Jess Turner, Mastercard’s Executive Vice President for Global Open Banking and API. “Open Banking provides lenders the owner-permissioned data and advanced analytics they need to offer more choice in financial services to small businesses, which are the backbone of the American economy.”
Read more about Open Banking for Business and how we’re innovating with our partners here.
Mastercard has partnered with upSWOT, a U.S.-based white-label embedded financial platform, to add data for small businesses on upSWOT’s platform.
With the addition of owner-permissioned data from Mastercard’s open banking platform, upSWOT now gives small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) the ability to link financial data to 200 API-enabled apps. These include accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), payroll, ecommerce, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), marketing, and POS business applications.
With this partnership, Mastercard and upSWOT will be able to provide SMBs with a smooth and effective approach to run their operations.
Read more about this innovative partnership here.
OPEN, EMBEDDED, MODULAR, AND ON A PLATFORM
The rapidly-evolving space of open banking, embedded finance, modular banking and banking as a platform is driving innovators with an API mindset, and the future will see more and more public-facing consumer brands embrace APIs across many industries.
A new report from Mastercard Data & Services looks at the relationship between BaaS and open banking, an aggregated approach to BaaS as it evolves into hosted marketplaces and ecosystems and how banks and fintechs can enable BaaS at scale.
Read the full report here.
Getting a mortgage has traditionally been a long and challenging process. Customers have had to dig up paystubs and bank statements to hand off to loan officers. Loan officers and processors then manually uploaded the paperwork into the lender’s database for review and then hope for the best. When a borrower sent an incomplete document or a processor made an error in data transposition, it could delay the loan approval process by days, even weeks.
But in today’s climate of rising interest rates and low inventory, those long wait times have gone from just annoying to potentially costing house hunters the chance to close on the homes they desire. For example, serious buyers should arrive at each showing with a pre-approval letter in hand, in order to be competitive. Even those just browsing will need to move quickly if the right house comes up. And those refinancing—yes, even as rates are climbing, there are borrowers who could save by refinancing—must act fast to nail the lower rate in place.
These inefficiencies and delays were troubling to Guaranteed Rate, who, as the second-largest retail lender in the U.S., has been helping to make the mortgage process easier since 2000.
Two years ago the company decided to look into taking its underwriting process digital. There was a lot on the line. The mortgage industry sets a high bar for the financial data used to underwrite loans, requiring documents from verified institutions. What’s more, borrowers share some of their most sensitive financial information to secure a loan. Guaranteed Rate was committed to protecting the consumer’s privacy and financial data.
What Guaranteed Rate came up with is a platform that enables customers to go online or use a mobile app to grant permission for the lender via a third-party service to access their financial and payroll accounts. That lets the lender quickly and accurately verify assets, income and employment.
If everything checks out, the lender can give the borrower a quick thumbs-up. In some cases, that’s all the data the lender needs for the mortgage to go forward. This digital verification process can cut up to eight days off the underwriting process. “From an efficiency standpoint, our underwriters don’t have to manually verify income and assets for every loan, so we can scale up,” says Brad Lando, Senior Vice President of Strategic Development, Guaranteed Rate.
The company protects borrowers’ sensitive data by using Mastercard’s open banking platform. When a borrower grants a lender access to their data, Mastercard’s technology issues a token. The token allows the lender to see the data, but never house it. Nor does the lender receive login credentials. The risk of those credentials being hacked during the mortgage process is reduced, and the customer gets a better experience.
Another advantage is that borrowers can grant ongoing account access for prolonged periods of time, such as 60 days. That means the lender can refresh the data as needed without having to go back and ask for renewed permission to track down more documents, alleviating the burden on the consumer. “It’s cut down on risk, in addition to bringing a better customer experience,” says Lando.
Loan officers and processors have been quick to adapt to this digital-first method. The automated verification system allows them to sign off faster on more straightforward loans, which frees them up to focus on the more complicated ones.
And while there’s still some trepidation among consumers, they’re also starting to see the benefits. When offered a choice to manually upload their documents or grant permission for the lender to pull their information, 83% of borrowers who chose the digital path said their loan processing time was shorter than they expected it to be, or that it met their expectations.
As digital verification becomes more prevalent, the mortgage process will speed up, from application to close. And that means more people can look forward to a smoother process on the way to landing in the homes they want to live in.