Zeal Solutions and Basiq partner to leverage consumer-consented data throughout the credit lifecycle

With the Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) regime, Consumer Data Right (CDR), and the proliferation of alternative credit, detailed analysis of a borrower’s financial viability is more important than ever. Comprehensive, accurate and up to date customer financial data can not only help financial institutions better service borrowers with a positive credit history and a new generation of ‘borrowers’ but also those going through financial hardship.

To help more providers and lenders take advantage of consumer-consented data throughout the credit lifecycle, Basiq and Zeal Solutions have partnered to provide enriched credit assessment solutions that accelerate customer onboarding with real-time data and improve servicing and decisioning through transaction insights.

Since 2006, Zeal Solutions has helped some of Australia’s largest financial institutions manage consumer and commercial credit risk with a suite of products and services across loan origination, debt collection and compliance. By partnering with Basiq, Zeal is now able to get a live feed of financial data, whether it’s being stored in a bank, fintech or alternative credit provider. Basiq ensures all the data returned is normalised and enriched for insights so that Zeal can help make the best financial decisions on behalf of customers. This includes identification of discretionary versus non-discretionary spend to better assess an applicant’s current financial situation as well as their ability to adjust spending to improve affordability in the future.

Specifically, Zeal will use Basiq’s consumer-consented transaction data and insights to:

• Accelerate onboarding processes with the ability to instantly understand customer spend and their ability to service a loan based on up to two years of transaction data.
• Add Personal Financial Management functionality to provide customers with insights into spending and saving patterns.
• Provide clients with ‘Customer Assistance’ tools that help customers repay their debts through informed transaction data.

By partnering with Basiq Zeal Solutions can also provide clients with ongoing visibility into a customer’s finances. Having real-time, ongoing digital visibility into a customer’s financial position can assist customers in repayments through tailored payment plans. This extends to automated notices and reminders. Zeal Solutions Digital Collect Ezee system also provides an integrated payment gateway, which combined with their real-time system, provides a powerful solution to increase collection rates.

For Zeal’s CEO, Dion Nathanielsz, financial data is key to revolutionising credit risk management, adding, “Only recently have we started to see the use of alternative data sets in credit performance. The benefits are clear but there’s been little in the market that reflects how powerful financial data can be. We are extremely excited with this partnership as it allows us to execute on these benefits and leverage transactional data insights to improve every aspect of the credit lifecycle for borrowers and lenders.”

As the CDR facilitates more Open Banking participation, Basiq will allow Zeal to take advantage of comprehensive, accurate and up to date customer financial data from an even wider set of institutions. For Basiq CEO, Damir Ćuća, open access to enhanced data will reduce the information imbalance between borrowers and lenders whilst helping borrowers through hardship.

“Mandated data sharing under Open Banking and CCR make it possible to better differentiate and service customers based on risk. Making this more accessible will only lead to better pricing for low-risk customers, more accurate lending decisions and the ability to better assist customers going through financial hardship.”