Admiral Financial Services (AFSL) has chosen challenger credit reference agency Credit Kudos to provide Open Banking Data to help with income verification.

The business, which is part of FTSE 100 company Admiral Group, will use the data to support customers across its personal loan products.

The new partnership will give AFSL access to additional, more up-to-date information than was previously available through traditional credit bureaus, to instantly verify an individual’s income.

AFSL may use this to understand a customer’s affordability, and better assess risk using financial data.

The financial services business paused lending during the COVID-19 crisis because of “difficulties verifying income resulting from redundancies, furlough, or reduction in work.”

AFSL will use Credit Kudos’ data through Open Banking to help return to growth, helping the loan provider increase lending volumes responsibly.

“Automatically assessing income in the wake of the pandemic caused difficulties for many lenders. Through this data-driven partnership with Credit Kudos, we are now able to more quickly and more reliably assess income allowing us to responsibly increase lending volumes,” said Scott Cargill, chief executive, Admiral Financial Services. “Data, agility and innovation, along with a strong customer focus, is at the core of our strategy and embracing Open Banking is just one part of this.”

He added: “In future it will allow us to offer new, revolutionary products, and ensure we can be more responsive to our customers’ needs and quickly adapt to meet them. Through this market-first partnership we will change the way our customers, including the financially underserved, access financial services and products.”

Freddy Kelly, chief executive and co-founder of Credit Kudos, said: “We’re seeing an increase in a range of financial institutions - not just banks - adopting Open Banking technology to steal a march on their competitors.

“By taking advantage of this technology, AFSL is firmly positioning itself as a pioneer in innovation and lending. Their customers who are searching for new loans – including the traditionally underserved – will soon be able to source new product offers by securely sharing data from their bank account.

“Using Credit Kudos’ embedded Open Banking journey, AFSL customers will be able to share their financial transaction data securely within their application. Once connected, Credit Kudos instantly aggregates and analyses their financial transaction data to provide AFSL with rich insights to enhance their income verification process.”

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