At Ultimate Finance we are always looking at ways to improve our processes and provide businesses with quick and seamless access to funding solutions that support their ambitions. Our approach to technology is rooted in our relationship-driven approach to service, which means we use the right tools to empower our teams and help them continually deliver excellent service to our clients.
One such tool we have been using is Open Finance, through both Open Banking and Open Accounting, which is proving to make it easier for business owners to benefit from our 5-star rated funding solutions.
Despite Open Banking having launched in 2018 and 80% of banks having adopted it successfully, it may appear to non-adopters as a technically complex setup, when in reality it has been developed to be user-friendly and only take a couple of minutes to get your accounts connected.
What is the difference between Open Banking and Open Accounting?
Open Banking is a technology that allows you to safely and securely share up-to-date financial information from your bank account with others such as a funding provider without needing effort or time to download or print any documents and manually send, thus making it easier to access funding whilst keeping your data secure.
Open Accounting is a similar technology which allows for a direct connection between your accounting software and funding provider to share up-to-date information seamlessly.
As part of our Working Capital Finance solutions, we use both to help provide funding, whether it is to assess how much credit can be made available (when opening a new facility or reviewing an existing one) or to considerably speed up the ongoing management of a facility, as having direct access to up-to-date data helps understand potential trends and opportunities.
What are the benefits of Open Finance?
Open Finance allows a safer and faster route for our teams to make decisions and provide businesses with the funding they need by providing us with real-time data and insights.
- It is easy, safe and fast for our clients to set up as it only requires quick consent to connect once every 90 days and they can choose to stop the connection when they want
- Data is shared safely and seamlessly, removing any risk of sensitive information getting lost or ending in anyone else’s hands
- It saves time and effort as it eliminates the need to download any financial report in the right format to share with us
How we use Open Finance to keep business moving
Our teams have been using Open Finance to provide businesses with quick data-led decisions on new and existing funding facilities.
In one instance, a consultancy business chasing growth through global expansion was struggling to find a funding partner that could provide a £1m Working Capital facility. Through Open Finance, Ultimate Finance was able to gather all financial data necessary to make an informed decision within just 30 minutes of meeting the business’ Financial Director and had a credit-backed offer ready within a day.
When asked about their experience using Open Finance, one introducer said, “Accessing a dashboard of information through Open Banking and Open Accounting had enabled our business to reduce the time taken from first meeting the prospect through to due diligence and onboarding. It is great to see Ultimate Finance embrace the use of this technology as part of their underwriting process and improve the efficiency of the customer journey and experience”.
If you would like to find out more about how Open Finance can help you save time and effort when managing your facility your dedicated Relationship Manager will be able to answer any questions you may have. If you have already set up Open Finance, don’t forget that you will be asked to reconnect every 90 days, which only takes a couple of clicks when prompted to keep your accounts linked up.
