Open banking, without the jargon

What you actually see

With consent, you see the accounts the applicant chooses to share, their balances, and a history of transactions. That history is where underwriting gets better. Salary arriving on a rhythm, existing loan repayments leaving, cash withdrawals, gambling — these are the markers that predict repayment better than a number typed into a form.

You do not see credentials, and you should not store more than the decision requires. Consent is time-limited and can be revoked. Treating the connection as a permanent window into someone's finances is both a compliance problem and a reason applicants refuse.

Explaining it to the applicant

Drop-off at the bank-connection step is usually a trust problem, not a technical one. Say what will be read, for how long, and that refusing means a slower manual route rather than an automatic decline. People accept a check they understand. They abandon one that feels like a blank cheque.

It is evidence, not a score

Bank data is an input. What you do with it — rules, a model, a reviewer — is the decision. Confusing the two is how teams end up unable to explain why a healthy-looking account was declined: the model saw something, and nobody wrote down what.