ANZ-backed Open Banking platform Bud, launches in Australia

The Open Banking fintech Bud has announced its Australian launch after receiving accreditation from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to provide Open Banking services.

The fintech, named a global leader in Open Banking intermediary services in Forrester’s 2021 new wave report, has gained accreditation as an Unrestricted Accredited Data Recipient under the Consumer Data Right (CDR) meaning that it can now offer a range of Open Banking services using the new financial APIs.

Bud is no stranger to the region, having worked with ANZ in New Zealand on providing more automated affordability checks for the last year. Today, the bank is processing the majority of all consumer lending through the Bud tool.

“Affordability checks are cumbersome for borrowers and inefficient for lenders” Said CEO Ed Maslaveckas “The CDR brings with it a huge opportunity to address that using intelligent financial data. We’ve already worked with tier 1 banks here in the UK, in Europe and in New Zealand on solutions in this space and it will be a big focus for us in Australia.”

“Open Banking data has the potential to revolutionize the way that lending works. In every case where we’ve deployed an affordability solution we’ve seen clients able to accept more lending applications without increasing risk appetite and we’ve done this whilst saving the client an average of around an hour of processing time per application. Those benefits get cycled back into the customer experience and the result is fairer access to credit and less hassle on both sides.”

Bud’s product suite is designed to help both financial and non-financial organisations transform key business processes with transaction data. Its core platform provides access to, and insights derived from, financial data, whilst a set of configurable solutions help clients get their services to market at speed.