Mutuals fastest with transactional data: Frollo

A new report released by Frollo has suggested that mutual banks are some of the fastest banks to supply transactional data under the consumer data right (CDR). 

According to the figures, which were included in the fintech’s February 2022 report on open banking’s API performance, mutual banks accounted for eight out of the top 10 fastest transactions for account APIs. 

The average response time was 0.88 seconds. 

Neobank 86 400 was reportedly the fastest for the month, coming in at 0.23 seconds per transaction, followed by the mutual banks bcu (0.29 seconds), Beyond Bank (0.31 seconds) and P&N Bank (0.41 seconds).

Frollo chief customer officer Simon Docherty said of the findings: “Open banking offers the biggest opportunity for customer centric businesses, as it can unlock better customer experiences, as well as more personalised products and services.”

He added that a mutual bank’s focus on “delivering value for customers” has made open banking the “perfect tool” for the customer-owned lenders to “deliver on their promise, by providing financial wellbeing tools, improved access to credit and better deals on their financials”. 

“We’re excited to help those early adopters in the mutual bank sector use open banking to deliver better customer outcomes,” Mr Docherty said.

As per the report, open banking is increasingly becoming more common with the number of data holders increasing from 11 to 59 between July 2021 and February 2022. 

Out of those who have been named as active data recipients, 23.5 per cent were mutual banks.

Comparatively, other banks marked 11.8 per cent of the total figure. 

In February, Beyond Bank, bcu and P&N Bank were all named as active data recipients under the CDR.

P&N Group, the owner of P&N Bank and bcu, was named an accredited data recipient (ADR) in November last year, while Beyond Bank was elected to be an ADR in September. 

Both P&N Group and Beyond Bank previously partnered with Frollo, gaining access to its CDR data, last year. 

Tonina Iannicelli, Beyond Bank’s senior manager, digital, commented that open banking provides the bank with the “opportunity to work for and with our customers by doing the heavy lifting on behalf of our customers,” such as collecting their financial data from various institutions to help manage their finances.

“This is just the start, and we are excited to see how else we can work with our customers to get them decisions quicker, offer services that they value, and continue to nurture our relationship with them,” Ms Iannicelli said.

P&N Group general manager technology transformation Erik Fenna echoed a similar position, stating that the group is focused on making banking easier for its customers by putting “more control of their overall financial wellbeing and day to day banking in their hands through open banking”.

Mr Fenna added that technology can assist in the facilitation of this. 

“By offering customer-centric technology that solves key financial pain points, such as money management and the home loan application process, not only will we make it easy to bank with us, importantly we will also make it easy for our customers to get ahead,” he said.

[Related: ‘Open Finance’ named as next CDR priority]