What could Open Banking do for you?

Following our Open Banking Time to Talk webinars, we are pleased to share this guest blog from Lloyds Bank summarising the benefits of Open Banking in a Higher Education context. If you missed our two-part series of webinars you can access the recordings of 'An Introduction to Open Banking' and the particularly useful 'Implementing Open Banking'.

What could Open Banking do for you?

A bit of context…

There has been a lot said and written about how “Open Banking” works and the various bodies responsible for its design and creation. This is useful context, but I want the conversation to move on to focus on what really matters, which is what it can do for you, your students, employees, and suppliers.

When new ways and means of doing things come to the market, it is natural that we are curious about how they actually work. Over the years, we have seen all manner of new and different capabilities land in our homes and businesses, from microwaves to smart phones and all points in between. How a smart phone does what it does, in large part, remains a complete mystery to me, but it is something I use every day.

The new capabilities enabled by Open Banking need to be looked at in the same way. Let the IT teams take care of the technical aspects, and it is important that they are involved from the beginning; but let the rest of us immerse ourselves in what they can do for us instead.

New ways of doing things…

We now have a range of new capabilities at hand, driven by Open Banking, that can help save you time and effort, help you improve the experience for your students and streamline the way you pay your suppliers. These are just a few of the possible benefits…

Saving time and reducing risk

One example might be how you set up a new vendor and how you check their bank details. In the past you may have had to ask for two types of proof, perhaps a bank statement or a piece of letter head paper. You wait for it to arrive, hope they have correctly understood what you need, and that what arrives is correct. Consider instead that you use the new Confirmation of Payee API, which once set up, means you can enter the details they supply and in less than a second you will have affirmation on if the details are correct or need investigation.

Faster, cheaper, and quicker

Receiving payments from your students, perhaps for accommodation fees, can be time consuming and offer challenges in reconciliation and making sure who has paid and by when. An Open Banking-derived solution, PayFrom Bank, is available that can transform their payment journey and deliver a real-time payment direct into your account using the faster payment system supported by a dedicated portal that enables you to track all payments received.

Making payments seamless

Imagine you could make a hardship payment direct to a student in seconds or pay a researcher before they reach the campus gate? The beneficiary can initiate these payments, they submit their details, you approve them. The two APIs combine; Confirmation of Payee makes sure the bank details provided are correct and then a bilateral payment API initiates a faster payment to deliver the funds into the beneficiary’s bank account in under two seconds. Combining these capabilities can make it even easier. We’ve wrapped these two steps into a single package with making it simple to transform existing processes.

The tip of the iceberg

These are just three examples of how these new Open Banking-derived advancements can be used to make real and valuable changes to the way you operate.

The best and most creative examples are yet to emerge, and we are convinced it will be our clients who imagine them first. That is the challenge for the sector, how else can these new capabilities be used to make changes that drive real benefit?

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss how you can you reap the benefits of Open Banking. New use cases are emerging on a regular basis and as you look to automate, digitise, and evolve your ways of working, these new capabilities can make a real difference.

Blog written by Lloyds Bank