Technology provider Intelliflo has opened up an open banking model to all its customers to provide a 360-degree view of financial portfolios in one place.
This will allow financial advisers to have a “better and more realistic understanding of their clients’ incomings and outgoings to support financial planning”, the firm said.
Advisory clients will be able to link all their current accounts, credit cards and savings accounts to the personal finance portal and see all their finances in one place.
Open Banking was released three weeks ago and has already identified around £20m ($25.7m, €21.8m) of “held away assets”, Intelliflo added.
A wider view
Nick Eatock, chief executive of Intelliflo, said: “Financial planning involves more than just advising on investment and mortgage products, it takes in to account a number of factors that contribute towards a client meeting their short- and long-term goals.
“Open banking technology gives advisers the ability to assess their clients’ entire financial portfolio and provide holistic advice based on accurate data. This technology is revolutionising the financial services industry, delivering new products that enable people to better manage their money.
“As the number of consumers using open banking through money management apps is on the rise, and the quality of this experience is improving, we’re pleased to be bringing this into the financial planning process.
“Since we announced our plans to launch open banking at our ‘Change the Game’ conference last year, holistic financial planning has become more important than ever. As we enter a recession, many will be relying on their adviser to keep their finances on track to meet their long-term goals.”
Put pressure on banks
Ian McKenna, director and founder of the Financial Technology Research Centre, has called the move a “step forward in the way that people are able to access and interact with their finances”, as it gives them the opportunity to view their monthly income and expenditure alongside their long-term savings and financial goals.
“It has enormous potential to help people save more, especially when nudging and other behavioural finance techniques can be applied through these platforms.
“Over one third of the IFA sector now has the capability to offer a highly functional client portal service that can provide details of the clients’ day to day finance via open banking, side by side with information on their long-term savings.
“Advisers can now offer a far better experience to their client than they can get from their banks, which do not have access to long-term savings data. Increasingly, it is the apps that people use on their phones that indicate who they trust most.
“If advisers can use open banking services like this to deliver a better customer experience, it will further increase the pressure on traditional banks which are already under threat from challenger banks and other fintechs.”
McKenna added that the UK government’s failure to deliver a pensions dashboard can create favourable grounds for advisers who use open banking solutions to access data and better serve their clients.
