Illion and Tic:Toc seek to help lenders improve approval times

Data and analytics provider illion has partnered with fintech lender Tic:Toc to provide its financial validation technology to the broader credit provider market.

The move will see illion resell Tic:Toc’s XAI Validate service (which launched earlier this year) to its lender customers in Australia and New Zealand in a bid to help lenders improve assessment times, which have blown out in recent months.

Tic:Toc’s software as a service (SaaS) solution works by overlaying account transaction data with lending intelligence and artificial intelligence models, in a bid to provide a “complete understanding of a customer’s financial position” without having to rely on stated financials or expenses benchmarks. 

It is hoped that the offering will help lenders accelerate application approval times while also “improving verification of borrowers’ financial positions to serve customers more responsibly”.  

Simon Bligh, CEO of illion, commented: “XAI Validate’s efficient financial validation modelling, combined with illion’s superior data and analytics, will enable more accurate identification of risk and simplify credit assessments for responsible lending. 

“It’s a win-win for everyone. Credit assessors will be able to determine the real serviceability of customers, enabling improved decision making, and ultimately a much better customer experience,” he said.

According to Tic:Toc, the technology has helped the lender increase its assessment efficiencies by 85 per cent.

Tic:Toc’s founder and CEO, Anthony Baum, said: “The power of XAI Validate is demonstrated by the fact the home loans business has provided a mortgage contract to a customer in less than one hour from the time they started their home loan application online, with as little as 12 minutes of human involvement. 

“Illion is a leading and trusted provider of data and analytics, and we’re thrilled to partner with them to take the customer experience to the next level. Together, we’re excited to help the industry to solve core problems around improving customer experience, increasing operational efficiency and lending more responsibly.” 

Speaking to Mortgage Business earlier this year, Mr Baum said the rollout of its SaaS platform was part of a broader strategy to leverage its customer-facing business to build and develop an enterprise business.  

“At the end of the day, what we’re finding is that some of the best fintech companies in the world [discover] a better product, build the technology, use that business to refine that technology and achieve really good customer outcomes,” he said.

“[Fintechs] then realise that it’s very costly to build brands in financial services. It takes time. It’s a highly competitive market. 

“The best business model is to take that know-how and make it available to the industry,” he said.

[Related: Home-lending business to play second fiddle: Tic:Toc]