Codat becomes Microsoft partner to give banks easier access to SME financial data

Codat – a London-based technology company that connects the internal systems of small businesses to banks, fintechs and other financial institutions, allowing business data to flow back and forth in real time – has announced it has become a Microsoft partner.

This means Codat is ‘co-sell ready’, enabling it to work with Microsoft to help solve problems for enterprise financial service firms globally. It will help firms to better understand their customers and make faster decisions, benefiting hundreds of thousands of SMEs applying for financial products.

Via a single API, Codat provides clients with connectivity to 18 business accounting platforms, as well as leading banking data sources such as Plaid and TrueLayer, and commerce data sources such as iZettle and Shopify. The latest integration to be added to the platform is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, to enable Codat’s clients to better service their mid-size business customers.

Large clients such as banks can be reassured that Codat has an enterprise-grade, secure, fully scalable software solution ensuring that important financial data is secured to the highest standard. The Codat platform is hosted on Microsoft Azure and both companies serve several mutual clients in the financial services sector including banks, lenders, insurers, payments, POS and ecommerce businesses. Microsoft customers deploying Codat can now exchange data with their small business customers without it leaving the security of Azure, making it easier for providers to integrate the Codat platform.

For example, Experian has built Codat’s API into their new generation of SME credit scoring products. This enables financial institutions to make faster and better-informed funding decisions, using the latest financial performance data contributed digitally by the small business. Client data is encrypted and secured in transit and the result is a secure and scalable solution for enterprise financial institutions who serve and need to exchange data with SMEs.

Commenting on the co-sell engagement, Pete Lord, CEO at Codat, said: “We’ve made rapid progress in addressing a universal pain point in SME financial services: the manual and slow exchange of financial data between SMEs and their service providers. Our modern API technology, hosted on Microsoft Azure, provides the means to do this better, giving firms the ability to offer SMEs a suite of improved and more agile products and services, while at the same time dramatically reducing their own operating costs.”