Following a successful pilot scheme, Nationwide, has approved the market roll out of Experian’s Open Banking solution to mortgage applicants who apply via any intermediaries that use Smartr365.

This innovation will mean mortgage applicants are no longer required to obtain statements manually from their bank before sending these to their broker for printing, certifying, scanning and uploading, saving brokers around  30 minutes on every application.

With Experian’s Open Banking powered technologies integrated within the platform, Smartr365 offers customers and intermediaries a fully digital mortgage journey, with the intention to minimise instances of fraud and errors whilst reducing the overall time spent on applications.

The partnership will allow Nationwide to access Experian-branded bank statements as an alternative to traditional bank statements as part of their overall mortgage application process.

The service, like a conventional bank statement, uses Open Banking to access a customer’s bank transaction data digitally with their consent.

Bank transaction data is then automatically categorised to make it easier to interpret and formatted into an Experian branded bank statement reducing the time taken to assess a customer’s affordability.

Through Smartr365’s HomeBuyer app, Experian’s Mortgage Passport gives intermediaries access to a single view of income, expenditure, and financial behaviour. This will allow applicants to consent, connect and share their financial information, including bank transactions and credit report data, with select intermediaries through a simple digital journey.

Nationwide Building Society intermediary digital relationships lead Andy Tilsley comments: “This is an example of how embracing technology can lead to simplification of what can be a manual and time-consuming process, one in which will improve the experience of the intermediary and Nationwide customer.”