Finicity is part of the Mastercard family. Our open banking platform provides the financial data you need.

Small-to-midsize business (SMB) owners have had to pivot and adjust to the new realities of the economy, throughout the pandemic and beyond. Implementing new business models, investing in PPE and managing employees all come with additional costs, in a business environment that’s already rife with inflationary pressures. 

Managing these challenges takes every available resource, and owner-permissioned SMB open banking data is powering the financial management apps and services that owners are embracing to improve their business operations. According to Mastercard’s Rise of Open Banking Small Business report, connecting accounts is the main driver that provides the insights and analytics that owners are looking for to help tackle critical business tasks. Ninety-six percent of owners are currently linking their business financial accounts, taking advantage of fintech apps and services that leverage open banking data to generate crucial information and insights for their businesses, helping to improve decision-making. The top reasons for connecting accounts are: 

With all the benefits of linking accounts, fintech innovators have a window of opportunity in the SMB space to improve the connection process:  

Even with the understandable adjustments that it takes to press forward into a new era of digital business and financial management, the desire to adopt is strong in the SMB sector. Owners want to digitize their businesses to help prevent fraud, automate processes and share data and insights across apps. 

Linking Accounts Generates Real-Time Financial Insights

Despite rising fintech use, 94% of small business owners still encounter financial pain points. Many of them cite financial management as a major source of stress.

Owners are seeking solutions that can help them with financial management to address these pain points. They’re looking for better ways to harness their business’s data to get a holistic view, optimize financial management and inform business strategy. 

This is where SMB fintech services providers can step in and provide solutions, partnering with SMBs as they push forward into the new digital economy. Owners are open to receiving help. Sixty-three percent are looking for help with financial planning for their business, and 85% want the kind of custom financial recommendations that come from linking accounts and sharing open banking data. 

The top driver for owners linking accounts is improvement in business decision-making. This comes directly from financial management apps and services. Real-time data paired with AI, machine learning and analytics can have a powerful impact on an owner’s speed of decision-making and action, allowing them to either take advantage of opportunities or avoid costly mistakes. 

Better data and better decisions naturally feed into the rest of the top-three SMB owners’ concerns: saving time and improving financial health. 

How Small Businesses are Using Open Banking Fintech Apps and Services

According to Mastercard’s report, banking is the top use case for small businesses, once they link their accounts. Depositing checks, paying bills and transferring funds are core, everyday needs that SMB owners are currently using fintech to accomplish. 

Billing and invoicing can be streamlined and automated with fintech, and small businesses want this. Sixty-one percent of small businesses are already using fintech to do so. When routine tasks can be handled in the background by apps, owners can move more pressing concerns to the forefront. Growing, scaling and developing products or services can be given the bandwidth they deserve.

Sixty percent are using digital apps and services for cash flow management. With real-time data from linked accounts, owners can pay bills strategically, while making sure they can pay vendors, employees and themselves. 

While the number of SMBs leveraging fintech apps is currently in the 50-60% range, the Rise of Open Banking study found that the number who want to use digital apps and services powered by open banking is over 90% for the majority of use cases. 

The 31.7 million small businesses in the US are looking for more choice in financial services. They’re willing and ready to adapt to the digital future, and are looking for innovators that provide solutions to help them make better decisions.

Mastercard’s “always on” platform means maximum connection uptime and the highest quality data for insights into the financial health of a small business. Read the full report here to see details on the solutions small businesses are looking for from financial service technology.

*Some open banking services are provided by Mastercard’s wholly owned subsidiary, Finicity Corporation.

According to a recent study from Mastercard, consumers say obtaining a mortgage is a serious pain point in an already painful homebuying process. The survey shows that 89% of homebuyers find the mortgage process to be equally or more stressful than the homebuying experience. 

Borrowers whose lenders used digital mortgage verifications were less likely to say the loan process was the most stressful part of buying or refinancing a home, and 83% of respondents using digital verifications said their loan processing time was shorter than expected or met their expectations. 

As a designated third-party service provider of Freddie Mac, Finicity, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mastercard, offers an integration of its open banking data and Mortgage Verification Services (MVS) with AIM that allows clients to automate the capacity assessment using consumer-permissioned data, direct deposit account data and work history. In the case of income, lenders can now look at direct deposit history to verify income. 

Click here to read the MReport article by Andy Sheehan, EVP Open Banking about how Mastercard’s open banking platform (provided by Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Finicity) is moving the mortgage process into the digital future.

The United States is home to 32.5 million small businesses, which amounts to 99.9% of all businesses in the country. They employ just under half of the workforce, and are responsible for 44% of total GDP. Clearly, supporting the growth of small-to-midsize businesses is essential to the lifeblood of the economy. 

The important role of the small business in the economy isn’t always reflected by lending guidelines that work for the small business owner, however. Thirty percent of businesses that apply for credit through traditional lenders are denied, or only qualify for a portion of the funds they need. These numbers drop even further for minorities looking for the operating capital they need to grow their businesses. 

In an increasingly data-driven, digital economy, there’s room for additional choice. Innovative lending solutions can give every owner an equal opportunity to make their business dreams a reality. 

Open Banking is Giving Lenders and Small Business Owners More Choice

According to Mastercard’s Rise of Open Banking study, 74% of small-to-midsize business (SMB) owners would share business performance data if it meant that they could better demonstrate their ability to pay back a loan and have more choice in lending options. Black, hispanic and millennial owners are even more enthusiastic about sharing financial data, if sharing it means being presented with better loan terms and options. Over 80% responded positively to data sharing in each of those demographic categories. 

Owner-permissioned data through Mastercard’s open banking platform can power apps and services with up to 24 months of rich cash flow attributes. This can inform better, more accurate insights which lenders can use to make financial decisions. Approvals, credit increases, leases and other small business needs can be granted with reduced risk of bad debt. 

Data can be used to develop new lending models and underwrite new lending products. This opens up access to capital with terms and options that can be crafted to fit unique SMB needs. Funding is an ongoing issue for small business owners. Eighty-five percent are looking for faster, easier access to capital, and 62% have received a business loan. 

Whether it comes from public-facing consumer retail, ecommerce, professional services or seasonal businesses, owner-permissioned open banking data is the launchpad for a fast-growing ecosystem of effective financial tools that simply didn’t exist in the pre-digital era. 

Rather than basing lending decisions on metrics like personal credit scores, business credit scores and time in business, lenders are using open banking data points and analytics to unlock capital. Businesses that may have been impeded by traditional guidelines that aren’t aligned with the modern economy now have new options for funding. They’re benefiting from advances in open banking data technology, and they’re asking for the financial opportunities and insights that data can provide.

Small Business Owners Want to Grow With Tools and Allies

Despite the challenges of rising costs, talent acquisition, supply chain issues, cybersecurity and a host of other concerns, owners are optimistic and ready to grow. Forty-seven percent say they’re in growth mode, and looking for allies to help them scale up. 

Over 80% of owners say they want a partner to help them find access to capital and to loans that fit the needs of their specific business. This is where open banking solutions stand out, and where innovators are expanding the lending ecosystem with data-driven loan products, like:

In just a three-month period at the beginning of 2020, U.S.-based fintech Lendio helped over 100,000 small businesses connect to over $8 billion in U.S. Paycheck Protection Program loans, using owner-permissioned open banking data to analyze cash flow and other alternative lending metrics.

Small business specialists like Lendio have been a badly-needed lifeline during the pandemic and beyond. An open banking platform makes it possible to close the smaller loans that financial institutions don’t typically originate, and to do it more quickly. The manpower needed to run open banking-powered apps and services is less intensive than what is required to handle the traditional underwriting process at larger institutions. The amount of work that it takes to underwrite smaller loans has made them less appealing to some lenders in the past. 

This has caused some business owners to be left behind, particularly women and minorities seeking less capital to fund their enterprises. 

Open banking provides real-time data that helps lenders understand a small to mid-sized business’ creditworthiness, letting them more quickly and easily approve loans, no matter the size. With small business loans ranging from $5,000 to $1.2 million, it’s clear there is a wide range of opportunities to ally with owners by offering specialized lending products. 

Addressing a Growing Need in the Small Business Sector

There’s a growing list of lenders covering every need and every niche that the market is asking for, and demand has never been higher. According to the Mastercard study, eighty-seven percent of owners already use or would like to use open banking-powered fintech apps and services to secure funding for their businesses. 

Small businesses are still recovering from the effects of the pandemic, with the percentage of cash-strapped enterprises moving up slightly, from 15% to 18%. Innovators have an opportunity to create solutions that help owners who need reserves and operating capital, but who may have a short tenure in business, a thin credit file or low FICO scores. 

Owners want to secure and refinance loans. They want allies to help them make informed decisions. Ninety-six percent of them are linking their accounts and sharing their data. Alongside the desire for funding, 85% are looking for the customized financial recommendations that can come from sharing data with open banking apps and services. They want access to capital, and they want it quicker and smarter, to keep pace with an unpredictable consumer marketplace. 

In the next installment of the Rise of Open Banking series, we look at how open banking is transforming the payments experience for the SMB. Click here to download the full study.

Mastercard’s open banking platform (provided by Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Finicity) offers pre-close reports that provide just the right data that GSEs need for 10-day verification of employment. Today, Freddie Mac announced the acceptance of our Verification of Employment (VOE) Reports. 

In adding the VOE Payroll and Transactions reports to our Mortgage Verification Services (MVS) product, we have enabled lenders to receive only the data GSEs require for the 10-day verification. Lenders can use these reports to view only your borrower’s employment status, rather than refreshing the full reports that contain more data than required for an employment verification. This minimizes the introduction of new income data or other redundant and unnecessary underwriting changes that could delay the loan closing or cause additional work.

The two available reports provide different types of information. The VOE Transactions report contains 120 days of refreshed transactions with dates and description, but no amounts or totals so income is not reassessed. It shows the latest direct deposits in the income streams, to confirm the  borrower is still being paid on their regular cadence.

Another option is the VOE Payroll report. This contains only employment status and details—no income or other data—so lenders can see that the individual is still employed according to their payroll provider.

These two reports are part of MVS at no extra charge and are currently available for lenders connecting directly to Mastercard and through Ice Mortgage Technology.

The VOE Transaction and Payroll reports can help lenders improve accuracy and simplify the process of verifying employment within ten days of closing, removing more friction from the loan origination process without increasing risk. With one click, a GSE-accepted VOE report is available in moments, avoiding the lost time and the uncertainty of tracking down verbal verifications from employers.

How can you access these 10-day pre-closing reports?

To pull the VOE reports today, your team will need to code directly to the endpoints or add this functionality through Encompass LOS from Ice Technology. You can find documentation here. To see Mastercard’s Mortgage Verification Services in action, request a demo here.

Want to learn what borrowers want from a digitized mortgage process powered by open banking solutions? Click here.

Freddie Mac has unveiled new automated underwriting capabilities that allow lenders to verify assets, income and employment using borrower-approved bank account data. On June 1, 2022, this functionality will be available to mortgage lenders nationwide through the asset and income modeler (AIM) in Freddie Mac Loan Product Advisor® (LPASM), the company’s automated underwriting system.

Mastercard’s open banking platform (provided by Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Finicity) is a service provider for this capability. The VOE Transaction and Payroll reports can help lenders improve accuracy and simplify the process of verifying employment within ten days of closing, removing more friction from the loan origination process without increasing risk.

Read more here.

Whether it comes to buying homes and automobiles, seeking a personal or small business loan, or even approval to rent an apartment, there can be one daunting step of the loan process: income verification. 

It can take a long time. It involves a lot of paperwork—if the borrower has devoted the file cabinet space to store it. And without transparency or the right information, the process can feel arbitrary.

Open banking can help. Let’s start at the beginning.

Which Documents Usually Provide Verification of Income?

Paystubs, which are one of the most basic data sources, can provide proof of income as well as employment verification at the same time. With a paycheck traceable to an employer or a client, a lender can determine what kind of income the check represents and can follow up with its issuer. 

Other income documents include proof-of-income letters, the standard W-2 annual tax statement and other tax forms that may be more fragmented. These documents aren’t always readily available. While they can be obtained from payroll providers and tax filing software, that involves even more digging and delays for what should be a simple process.

Processing that kind of paperwork, following up with employers and verifying the details is time-intensive—and thus, money-intensive. 

How Does Finicity’s Income Verification Make a Difference?

Open banking gives lenders a way to verify income quickly and securely, by verifying income where income is deposited in bank accounts.

Finicity’s income verification allows borrowers to connect their financial accounts to the lenders or services they’re interacting with. This lets borrowers quickly and securely skip much of the manual paperwork, while lenders can make informed decisions with comprehensive transaction and income data, ranging from 24 months of deposit transactions to estimated annual income and average monthly income. All of the information is categorized and ranked with confidence streams using artificial intelligence and machine learning as part of Finicity’s data analytics solutions.

What do we mean by “comprehensive data?” With open banking, the process of verifying income can go beyond paychecks, tax forms and phone calls. With more consumer-permissioned data sources comes a fuller picture of a borrower’s financial health and more accurate income verification.

Where Does Open Banking Fit into Mortgage Lending?

Mortgages are one of the most significant loans that many consumers will take out in their lifetimes, and the mortgage application process can be complex—to an intimidating degree. According to a recent Finicity survey of homebuyers, the top reason that people hesitate to refinance their home is because of the prospect of going through the income and employment verification and qualification processes all over again. 

Mortgage credit decisioning hinges on the borrower’s ability to make their mortgage payments on time. Most mortgage lenders require borrowers to provide at least two years of employment and income history via tax documents, paystubs and asset statements. The same goes for self-employed borrowers.

Mastercard’s open banking platform (provided by Mastercard’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Finicity), is able to leverage open banking data to satisfy the most stringent guidelines for the highest-value loans. We’re one of the only data providers approved to verify assets and income digitally by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This data also makes it easy to refresh employment verifications right before close to make sure nothing has changed simply by checking whether they received their last paycheck. When you’re working with something as consequential as someone’s home loan, trust is key.

How Can Renters Benefit from Open Banking?

Homeownership isn’t for everyone, and open banking also helps renters navigating the apartment application process. Landlords screening potential tenants can use the same data to make decisions based on the applicant’s income and their historical rental payments. It can also help give context to low credit scores or other potential red flags on the application, resulting in a fairer decisioning process.

When do Auto Loans Require an Income Check?

Auto loans don’t typically require income verification, but the process may come into play when the prospective borrower has a thin credit file, smaller down payment or a lower credit score. The same goes for credit cards, personal loans and growing payment segments like buy-now-pay-later (BNPL).

For thin-file borrowers such as young people and recent immigrants, checking a credit score doesn’t tell their whole financial story. It can lead to frustrating denials, even though they have evidence of qualifying income and that they pay their bills on time. 

By incorporating income and other data—like transactions from connected bank accounts, debt-to-income ratio and more, open finance opens up a world of possibility. Borrowers can be approved for their car loan and qualify for lower interest rates. Lenders, meanwhile, won’t miss out on opportunities to bring new customers on board with a simple process that they can get through while their buyer is still at the dealership.

How can Income Data be Incorporated into Decisioning for Personal Lending?

For many personal lenders, checking income after the fact may not be the most efficient way to approve loans. With open finance, the income, transaction data and analytics can be just as easily incorporated into their lending algorithms as in mortgage and auto lending.

Personal lenders of all types look at hundreds of different pieces of data, depending on how much they’re lending and what it’s for. Open banking provides highly actionable data, direct from the applicant’s bank accounts. It slides seamlessly into their decisioning models.

They no longer have to be satisfied with borrower-submitted income figures or delays in providing supporting documentation when a loan approval is up in the air. Using consumer-permissioned data, lenders receive a nearly real-time view of the applicant’s income and bank account data for a clearer credit decision.

How Does This Help the Consumer?

Verifying income with transaction data permissioned by consumers allows lenders and fintech innovators to simplify the customer experience with a more flexible underwriting process. It provides more choice to consumers, who can still use their paystubs or bank statements while also speeding up the decisioning process by permissioning their financial data.

Open banking adds the data necessary to easily verify income quickly, securely and without manual processes. Whether you’re lending, renting or leasing, Finicity’s income data can simplify the process and provide valuable insights. More data, more time saved, more satisfied borrowers and tenants—open banking helps everyone out.

Related pages:

Income products

Income verification mortgage

Open banking

Every day, to a larger and larger portion of consumers, the pre-digital era of account opening becomes smaller in the rearview mirror. Among the growing millennial and Generation Z consumer demographics, the idea of visiting a physical location to open a financial service account might almost sound vintage.

But just how many consumers are we talking about? To find out more about what’s driving people to establish and maintain the financial foundations of their day-to-day digital lives, Finicity teamed up with PYMNTS to publish Account Opening and Loan Servicing in the Digital Environment. 

Drawn from a survey of over 2,300 U.S. consumers in December 2021, this report illustrates the rising number of consumers opening accounts digitally, their levels of comfort in managing their finances on a screen and the distinct role that digital plays between account types.

Account Opening

The numbers show that consumers are rapidly adopting online banking services in lieu of taking trips to brick-and-mortar branches. About 151 million adults in the U.S. opened a new financial account in the past 12 months, and more than three-quarters of them did so digitally. 

Banking has gone mobile in a big way as well. More consumers than ever are opting to bank from anywhere: according to prior PYMNTS research, 69% of all consumers opt to bank from their couch, the sidewalk, restaurants—wherever they feel like it—with their financial institutions’ mobile applications. Within the past year, 76% of all new financial accounts were opened via digital means.

Additionally, almost eight-in-ten Gen-Z consumers reported feeling “very” or “extremely” comfortable opening a financial account with a mobile app. That’s an entire generational cohort for whom mobile banking is simply the norm.

A significant portion of consumers—36%—said that they believed opening an account digitally was more secure than through traditional means, and younger cohorts were most likely to say that they felt more secure providing financial data such as proof of income and employment via open-banking channels.

Loan Servicing

Loan servicing is going digital as well. Most consumers have at least one outstanding loan account open, and most of them also manage those loans digitally whether on a desktop or mobile environment.

A large generational divide exists in our data regarding loan management—older consumers form a larger portion of those with loans to manage, and older consumers also express less comfort with digital finances overall. Concerns with data security are the top reason consumers gave as to why they wouldn’t elect to manage a loan digitally. 

On the flip side, the portion of consumers who are “more” or “much more” likely to use a digital financial account to manage loans grew 54% over the past two years, and consumers indicate that they feel much more comfortable with the idea of opening a new account online.

Consumers also indicate an interest in one of the main benefits of open banking—convenience. Half of consumers say that they’d be more likely to open a new account if the required financial information—income and employment verification, for example—were automatically transferred as part of the process. Verification takes time and labor, and open finance solutions allow both consumers and lenders to skip mountains of paperwork at account opening.

Learn More

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s been clear for a long time that the future of financial management is digital. PYMNTS and Finicity have brought you the data showing just how quickly things are accelerating in the space. To learn more, download Account Opening and Loan Servicing in the Digital Environment today.

InstaMortgage’s adoption of Finicity’s Mortgage Verification Services cloud-based technology took about six months, from shopping around for the best provider, to negotiations, inking a deal and then completing the integration itself.

InstaMortgage founder and CEO Shashank Shekhar (pictured) said his company has done many other integrations, but this one may have been the most critical for his company.

Read the full article here.

Freddie Mac announced today the company will launch a new, automated capability that allows mortgage lenders to assess a prospective homebuyer’s income paid through direct deposit. This solution is available to mortgage lenders through Freddie Mac’s Loan Product Advisor® (LPASM) asset and income modeler (AIM). Finicity is one of the service providers for this product, helping to create a more streamlined solution for lenders and borrowers alike.

Read Press Release.

In this podcast episode, HousingWire CEO Clayton Collins is joined by Nick Thomas, the co-founder and president of Finicity and executive vice president at the Office of Engagement at Mastercard.

The pair discuss how the digital mortgage process and fintech innovation can help consumers manage and navigate the home-buying process. Thomas also gives an inside look at Finictiy’s acquisition journey with Mastercard and some words of advice for fellow entrepreneurs.

Listen to the full episode here.