Australian neobank Volt has joined with Open Banking intermediary Frollo to jointly build and launch a new white-labelled banking-as-a-service (BaaS) app that is fully integrated with its core banking system.
Volt’s first customer for the new app is one of Australia’s largest broker groups, Australian Finance Group (ASX: AFG). AFG launched its ‘Handl. By AFG’-branded customer app for a pilot group of 125 brokers in October and will roll it out to all of its 3,050 brokers in early 2022.
The app allows AFG customers to see and manage their AFG Sparc home loan product, open and manage a Volt Savings Account, make payments and manage a Volt debit card from the one app.
Users will be able to link accounts from over 80 other financial institutions to get a real-time view of their financial position, with all transactions categorised to identify merchants, bills, and pay days.
As part of the working arrangement with Frollo, Volt will also become the first lender to use the vendor's Open Banking-enabled ‘Financial Passport’ to automate its lending decisions through a real-time assessment of the borrower’s financial situation.
Steve Weston, CEO & founder of Volt, says: “Frollo has worked with us from day one to deliver great money management experiences for our customers in our Volt Labs and Volt Bank apps. Frollo also helped us test our Data Holder solution and helped us with our Data Recipient accreditation, so when it came time to build a next-generation banking app with a full suite of open banking and PFM features to accompany our new BaaS offering, they were the obvious choice.”
Volt’s former consumer app will also be updated with the new build, he adds, which will give customers a full overview of their finances, insights on how to improve, and the tools to act on them through smart insights, nudges, and spend graphs.