How we verify your company’s bank statements with Open Banking

To decide whether a loan is affordable for your company, we need to understand how its bank account behaves. The quickest and most secure way to share that is Open Banking. It often feels like the part of the application people are most cautious about, so this article explains exactly what happens, what we can and cannot see, and the PDF alternative if you would rather not connect your bank at all.

What Open Banking is

Open Banking is a regulated, UK-wide framework that lets you give a business read-only access to your account information through your own bank. When you choose it during your application, we act as what is called an Account Information Service Provider (AISP). That means we can read your company’s transaction history to assess affordability; it does not let us move, take or touch your money in any way. For the wider picture of what Open Banking is and why it is safe, see what is Open Banking and is it safe.

How you authorise it

You stay in control the whole time. The connection is made through your own bank’s secure login: you confirm the access there, using your bank’s normal security, not by handing us your banking password. We never see or store your online banking credentials. You are the one granting permission, directly, at your bank.

What we can see, and for how long

We look at roughly the last six months of the company’s transaction activity, income in, payments out, and how the account is generally run. That is enough to judge whether the repayments on the loan you want sit comfortably within your trading. We do not need, and do not get, the ability to make payments. To see how this feeds the wider decision, read business credit score: how it works.

You can revoke access at any time

The permission you grant is not permanent and not one-way. You can withdraw it whenever you like, either through your bank or by asking us, and the read-only access stops. Many people choose to revoke access once their application is complete, which is entirely reasonable.

Why it is faster

Because the data comes straight from your bank in a structured form, much of the affordability check can be done immediately. That is why applications using Open Banking often get a decision in minutes and can be funded the same business day, while PDF uploads, which a person reads, take longer.

If you would rather not connect your bank

Open Banking is optional. If you prefer, you can upload six months of official business bank statements as PDFs instead. This is fully acceptable and reaches the same decision; it simply takes a little longer because a member of our team reviews them by hand. Choosing PDFs does not count against you. If you try to connect and it does not work, that is fine too; you can switch to uploads.

How this protects you

Read-only access is genuinely safer than emailing statements around, because there is nothing for anyone to intercept and no payment power to misuse. We keep the information we receive secure and use it to assess your company, not for anything else. We also assess the company, not your personal finances, and we take no personal guarantee from you as a director.

We built our application around this kind of secure, customer-controlled data sharing; you can read more about the approach on our technology page. Remember that this borrowing is to a company for business purposes, so it sits outside FCA consumer-credit regulation under Article 60B FSMA RAO 2001 and is not covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or the FSCS. Whichever method you choose, you will see your full figures on your Key Information Sheet (KIS) before you sign the Business Loan Agreement.