How leading firms evaluate Open Banking providers: Lessons from the front line

When you're dealing with affordability assessments, collections strategies, or vulnerability detection, surface-level insight won’t cut it. You need data you can trust: data that reflects your customers’ real financial circumstances and supports confident decision-making.

Choosing the right Open Banking provider means going beyond the basics. Connectivity is important. But so is coverage, data quality, regulatory assurance, and how easily that insight fits into your existing processes.

Here’s what to look for:

A strong API is just the starting point

Open Banking AIS (Account Information Services) enables access to transaction-level bank data through secure APIs, with the customer’s permission. It’s a regulated process designed to give firms a clearer view of income, outgoings, and financial resilience, helping improve outcomes across credit, collections, and support journeys.

But not all providers offer the same quality or reliability. The real value lies in what happens beyond the connection, for instance, how well that data is categorised, interpreted, and delivered for operational use.

1. Bank coverage that drives real conversion

One of the first questions to ask is simple: which banks are covered, and how well?

Providers may offer dozens of API connections, but that doesn’t guarantee performance across the banked population. For example:

• Do they include both consumer and business accounts?
  
  

• Are the connections fully PSD2-compliant and free from screen scraping?
  
  

• What does the customer journey look like for each bank and where do users tend to drop off?
  
  

Poor coverage or inconsistent performance can lead to consent failures, missing data, and reduced completion rates, ultimately undermining the entire process.

2. Regulated status that holds weight

Open Banking data is sensitive. And while any provider offering AIS must be authorised, the type of authorisation matters.

Some providers operate as AIS agents, offering services under the licence of a principal firm. Others are fully authorised AISPs with direct regulatory responsibility. For firms using Open Banking data to support affordability, risk, or vulnerability strategies, the distinction is worth noting.

Directly authorised providers may offer stronger governance and oversight, essential considerations when that data is being used to inform regulated decisions or feed into credit risk models.

3. Accurate, granular categorisation

Capturing transactions is one thing. Turning them into reliable insight is another.

The value of Open Banking data depends on how well it’s categorised across income types, benefit receipts, debt repayments, and essential outgoings. High-quality categorisation models help surface financial resilience, spot signs of stress, and assess affordability with far more precision than broad, pre-defined groupings.

It’s also important to understand how often transactions fall into ‘Uncategorised’ or ‘Other’. If providers can’t classify data with confidence, downstream analysis suffers.

Look for models that are actively used and tested in real financial environments and that improve over time based on real-world feedback.

4. Integration that works in practice

Open Banking needs to work well with your systems and your teams.

Strong providers support integration with well-documented APIs, flexible data formats, and responsive onboarding. They also provide sandbox environments, implementation guidance, and help navigate internal processes and controls.

How firms are applying Open Banking data

The strongest Open Banking use cases combine clean, accurate data with a clearly defined purpose. Across sectors, leading organisations are already applying that combination to improve outcomes.

💬 Financial Services: Supporting fairer lending

Lenders are using real-time income and expenditure insight to build a fuller picture of affordability, especially for applicants with thin files or irregular income. This helps reduce default rates, strengthen decisioning, and improve customer outcomes.

💬 Utilities: Identifying hardship

Open Banking helps validate ‘proof of hardship’ for customers seeking support, offering a real-time view of their financial circumstances rather than relying on static data or assumptions.

💬 Public Sector: Allocating resources

Some councils and government-funded services are using Open Banking data to make faster, fairer affordability assessments, particularly where traditional data falls short for vulnerable or low-income groups.

💬 Telecoms: Managing risk at sign-up

Telcos are using Open Banking at onboarding to assess affordability and reduce the risk of failed payments or early churn.

The detail that makes the difference

Many providers offer access. Fewer provide the accuracy, transparency, and operational fit that’s needed to embed Open Banking insight into business-as-usual processes.

Here’s a summary of what separates them:

Final thoughts

Open Banking data has the potential to transform affordability, vulnerability, and collections strategies. But that potential depends on choosing a provider that does more than deliver connections.

From categorisation quality to regulatory standing, the detail matters. And for firms building critical processes on Open Banking data, confidence in those details is essential.