Experian Partners With Finicity To Speed Up Lending

Experian is pairing up with tech firm Finicity to launch a new product that is intended to make consumer lending in the U.S. a speedier process.

Finicity’s technology aggregates data from banks and financial institutions — thousands of them — and with the new tie-in with Experian, banks will now be able to access that data to make underwriting determinations.   That could mean, among other things, that mortgage applications could be done minus the tonnage of paperwork that goes into a typical underwriting — with consumers instead having an option to just let a potential lender view their account data.

The new service, which is launching today (March 20), could trim the underwriting process for home loans from the standard average 70 days down to a much more manageable 10.

The move, according to Reuters reports this AM, comes as banks are facing increasing pressure to better digitize their service offerings for consumers — particularly as a wave of digital firm alternative lenders have been taking to the field in recent years and offering approvals in minutes as opposed to days and weeks.

Experian and Finicity have also noted that their joint product will help consumers with little or no credit history because it will give lenders access to a wider range of financial data to get an idea of how good a loan risk they are.

The CFPB has recently begun an inquest of alternative data sources as a basis for underwriting — particularly the benefits and risks of such a system.