Yolt, the European data driven open banking provider, has teamed up with October, a lending platform for small and medium businesses (SMEs), to speed up loan application processes.
Through their collaboration, Yolt and October demonstrate ‘how open banking can play an increasingly vital role’ in providing greater financial inclusion for SMEs, while making the process of applying for a loan easier.
Due to go live in France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany, the collaboration sees October using Yolt’s Account Information Services to utilise open banking data in its credit assessment process for SME lending.
Nicolas Weng Kan, chief executive officer at Yolt, said: “We are thrilled to be working with October who are as innovative and technology-obsessed as we are at Yolt. We’re confident this collaboration will help to improve the lending experience for SMEs, providing broader credit options quickly and accurately. This does not only make the credit application process faster and more transparent, but also fairer.
“With open banking, businesses have control of their own financial data, and it provides an easier way to verify income and demonstrate creditworthiness. We’re delighted to be in a position where we can use our experience, being one of the first to start brokering open banking and the only pan-European provider, to broaden the reach of businesses benefitting from credit scoring whilst making processes more efficient for platforms like October.”
Updating October’s technology
The objective is to replace pdf-based bank statements with up-to-date, real-time open banking data. October’s customers will be able to link their bank accounts at the point of application, providing access to a broad profile of their businesses’ affordability and credit worthiness.
Patrick de Nonneville, CEO of October, stated: “As the leading European platform in SME lending, we constantly invest in our own technology but also opt to buy when it’s more efficient. For example, given the importance of bank transactions in our scoring and the current low level of open banking adoption by SMEs, we’ve built our in-house pdf extraction systems; but as this adoption improves, we aim to switch to direct connections as much as possible.
“Yolt’s strong European coverage corresponds to October’s European footprint and enables European SMEs to link their bank accounts, so that we can assess a broader profile of credit worthiness and speed up our decision process even more, supporting our mission to finance businesses better.”