Talk Money Week - Open Finance features to help your customers #TalkMoney

November 4-8th 2024 is Talk Money Week - an initiative from the Money and Pensions Service that seeks to help people have more open conversations about their money - from pocket money to pensions - and continue these conversations all year round.

Money is a deeply emotive topic, and the anxiety, guilt or shame someone might feel around their finances may mean they find it difficult to talk about. Yet research has shown that people who do talk about money make better, less risky financial decisions, feel less anxious and can help their children form good lifetime money habits.

Here’s one Moneyhub feature for each day of Talk Money Week, that can help you to help your customers start talking money:

1. Budgets, forecasts and spend analysis

2. Personal Debt Manager

3. Emergency Cash Builder

4. Benefits Finder

5. Pensions Finder

Budgets, forecasts and spend analysis

• Why is it important?

  Understanding how much money is coming in, and where it is going out is the first fundamental step towards financial wellness.

  One of the most significant sources of financial stress is not knowing if there'll be enough money left at the end of the month. As cash usage continues to decline the increased use of 'Digital' money means its harder than ever to keep track of direct debits, BNPL repayments, ad hoc bills and spending on debit, credit cards or payment services like Paypal.

• How does it work?

  Our budgeting, forecasting and analysis features make getting those healthy foundations in place as easy and intuitive as possible.

  Users are encouraged to connect all of their spending accounts to give them a complete picture of their finances. Our technology can then identify income, regular bills and payments and the spending and income analysis helps build a very tangible, visual representation of what’s going where.

  Every transaction is categorised so that the customer can create and set spending budgets for things such as fuel for the car, the weekly food shop, clothes for the kids or home repairs. No matter what account or card is used to make a payment the category is identified and allocated to the correct budget so they can see where their money goes and, when they are in danger of going over budget and take avoiding action.

Personal Debt Manager

• Why is it important?

  UK adults owe £1.9t in personal debt. Failing to keep on top of debt can impact health, wellbeing and the ability to work.

  A study from the Royal College of Psychiatrists found that half of all adults with a debt problem also live with mental ill-health. This ranged from a consistent feeling of anxiety and low mood to a diagnosed mental health condition.

  Debt can be a considerable burden, made worse by dealing with it alone.

  Worrying about debt can affect sleep. Losing out on a good night’s sleep can not only affect mood and energy levels, it can also affect someone’s ability to work or have good relationships with friends and family.

  All of these things in turn can further add to debt problems.

• How does it work?

  Our Personal Debt Manager gives your customers a suite of tools to help them check, manage and adjust their spending so they stay in control of their income and outgoings.

  We know that people get better outcomes when when:

  • They regularly check income, outgoing and bank statements, and;

  • Adjust spending on non-essentials when money is tight

  Your customers can use Personal Debt Manager to connect all of their bank accounts, credit cards and loans in one place so they can check each and every transaction in real time. They’ll benefit from a range of tools, including Personal Balance Alerts, Spending Analysis, Regular Payments and Rent Recognition.

  By utilising these tools, your customers can:

  • Gain sight of where their money is going and where changes need to be made and set realistic budgets

  • Reduce the risk of missing a repayment as they have a full list of upcoming payments to help them plan in advance

  • Even build their credit score through Rent Recognition

  Eliminating debt is about more than the numbers - debt relief brings reduced stress and anxiety, improvements in cognitive functioning and changes in decision making. When someone clears their debt, it’s a significant life event.

  With Moneyhub, you can help them get there.

Emergency Cash Builder

• Why is it important?

  Be it building an emergency cash fund for whatever life throws at them, or saving towards that all important first home, our technology can help you become a significant force for financial good in your customers’ lives.

  With the Financial Conduct Authority reporting that nearly 13m UK adults have little capacity to withstand a financial shock, helping your customers build an emergency fund to weather a financial storm, or simply for a rainy day, can improve financial outcomes, build trust in your brand and deepen the relationship they have with your firm.

• How does it work?

  Moneyhub’s Emergency Cash Builder makes it easy for your customers to increase their financial resilience in three simple steps:

  1. Personalise: Choose a connected account in which the emergency cash fund will be created and give the fund a name. It could be simply an ‘emergency fund’, or something more personal, such as ‘my holiday fund’ or ‘Mum’s 60th birthday’. Customers can create multiple funds for different goals. After naming their emergency cash fund the customer will be prompted to set a target amount and time period over which they wish to save.

  2. Monitor: Each Emergency Cash Fund will automatically appear in the customer’s personal dashboard. They’ll see how much they’ve saved in total and how close they are to achieving their goal.

  3. Celebrate: Moneyhub’s dashboard view provides a visual measure of success. Overlay a nudge in the app or any other communications channel to help the customer celebrate their achievement and provide them with an onward journey.

  Customers can transfer money to their Emergency Cash Builder fund using their bank’s banking app or by creating a standing order. Or if enabled, they can use Moneyhub Open Banking payments technology to make a payment from within a Personal Financial Management app.

  When people have some savings to fall back on, their increased financial resilience leads to reduced stress and anxiety, a greater sense of choice and control and even higher self esteem. With Moneyhub, you can help your customers get there.

Benefits Finder

• Why is it important?

  According to Policy in Practice around 8 Million households in the UK are missing out on £16-19 billion in benefits every year. This works out at around £5k per household, every year - a potential lifeline for low-income households.

  In 2021, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Welfare at a Social Distance found that the most common reason why people miss their benefits is that they are unaware of the welfare benefits they are entitled to or assume that they are not eligible

  The main reasons people are not taking up benefits they are aware of:

  • Group A: 42% Wrongly assume they are not entitled

  • Group B: 39% Unaware of the range of benefits they could be entitled to

  • Group C: 19% Don’t apply because they are overwhelmed by the process, or find the stigma difficult to deal with

• How does it work?

  Description text goes hereWe’ve embedded InBest’s Benefits Finder into our Personal Financial Management solution, enabling people to identify benefits they may be eligible for based on their financial data.

  The benefits calculator can help those in Groups A and B to find out which benefits they are eligible for and the boost to their income they could receive.

  By incorporating the calculator into a financial management app, we can better serve Group C through personalised nudges and support articles, to help guide them through their benefits applications.

Pensions Finder

• Why is it important?

  It’s no secret that the pensions industry has an engagement problem. In 2020 the Financial Conduct Authority found 59% of adults contributing to a workplace DC pension have low, or very low pension engagement.

  Low levels of engagement correspond with low levels of understanding around pensions, and people are missing out on a better retirement.

  In fact, one in five pensioners is now living in relative poverty in the UK, with the number of financially insecure pensioners soaring to more than two million.

  With the government’s work on the Pensions Dashboard Programme stalled, our Pension Finder offers an interim tool to help people track down, understand and engage with their pensions.

• How does it work?

  Pension Finder allows people to build a full picture of their pension and make crucial retirement plans by connecting the Moneyhub app with their LinkedIn profile.

  It is designed to help pension managers, workplace pension providers, trustees or advisors help their customers engage with their pensions, encourage them to save more cash for retirement and understand the long-term implications of their current financial situation and savings strategies.

  Users can combine the pensions information found by analysing their career history with other information aggregated and calculated by Moneyhub in tools such as Moneyhub’s Lifestyle Modeller, which predicts people’s financial situation after a major event such as retirement to set lifestyle expectations.

  When people have a complete financial picture they are able to make better decisions or get the help they need. The Pension Finder seeks to make financial admin easier and ultimately encourage savers to take positive steps to secure their future financial wellness.

You can offer your customers any of these features as part of our fully customisable white label financial management app, or incorporate them into your own offering as widgets.

Monzo and the pensions revolution

Monzo, the UK challenger bank, has been a key player in the fintech space and encouraged  wide adoption of Open Banking from Gen Z and Millennials. It recognised consumers’ desire for an intuitive, digital solution that enables them to manage all of their finances in one place - offering account aggregation, categorisation, and credit scoring through their Monzo Plus solution.

After its plans to move into the pensions market went public in 2023, Monzo has announced it will be launching a new pension consolidation solution that finds users’ pension pots and brings them into one fund, accessible through the Monzo app.

The announcement comes as Monzo’s research revealed that 51% of UK adults don’t know how much they have saved for retirement. It asked 2,000 people what would make engaging with their pension easier, and 38 per cent said a process that felt more accessible to manage alongside their everyday finances.

Pensions engagement in the UK

Earlier this year, we conducted our own research into consumer attitudes towards their pension and investment providers. We found that:

• 36% of 35-44 year olds said too little information from their providers was putting them off adding to their pension or investments

• 2 in 5 (42%) of all consumers say they don’t find it easy to interact with their providers

• 4 in 5 (79%) consumers “could save more money” if they had one app to view and manage all their banks accounts and financial products

And this lack of engagement is having a detrimental effect on financial health. Recent research has shown that around 88% of individuals with workplace pensions have at least one pension that remains unclaimed and there is an estimated £26.6bn of lost pension pots in total and nearly 1 million pensioners in the UK are living in poverty. 

The power of ‘all in one place’

A holistic approach can lead to better outcomes, and it begins with aggregation. Bringing pension pots together helps people understand their true financial position, and answer important questions like “will I have enough?” or “when can I retire?”. It also helps people make better informed decisions based on the performance of their pensions, both financially and ethically, and explore options such as consolidation. 

At Moneyhub we would go one step further and bring other investments such as savings, shares and even property into that view. Quite often people will take a lump sum earlier than or draw down faster than they need to when they have other options open to them. 

Monzo’s solution reflects what we are seeing from major players within the pensions industry; pensions are one piece of the puzzle, and need to be understood in the wider context of someone’s financial world. 

Providers such as Mercer, Standard Life and Scottish Widows are taking a proactive approach to helping members engage with their pensions and understand what they have, and what they might need for a comfortable retirement. By using Open Finance to position pensions alongside daily spending, savings, investments, properties and all other financial accounts, these firms are increasing engagement and enabling better financial futures for their members.

The future of pensions and Open Finance

Monzo’s announcement came hot on the heels of the King’s Speech (17 July 2024) in which it was announced that the Government will bring forward the Digital Information and Smart Data Bill, as well as a Pensions Scheme Bill.

Paving the way for Open Finance legislation, the Smart Data Bill seeks to set a clear framework for consent-driven data sharing, offering new opportunities for innovation to firms, and improved transparency, products and services to consumers - meaning there’s plenty of scope for further pensions transformation, through pensions dashboards and beyond.

If you’d like to find out more about what Open Finance can do for your business, and your customers, just get in touch →

Talk Money Week - Moneyhub features to help your customers #TalkMoney

November 6-10th 2023 was Talk Money Week - an initiative from the Money and Pensions Service that seeks to help people have more open conversations about their money - from pocket money to pensions - and continue these conversations all year round.

Money is a deeply emotive topic, and the anxiety, guilt or shame someone might feel around their finances may mean they find it difficult to talk about. Yet research has shown that people who do talk about money make better, less risky financial decisions, feel less anxious and can help their children form good lifetime money habits.

For the course of Talk Money Week we focused on one Moneyhub feature each day, that can help you to help your customers start talking money. Here’s the round up:

1. Budgets, forecasts and spend analysis

2. Personal Debt Manager

3. Emergency Cash Builder

4. Benefits Finder

5. Pensions Finder

Budgets, forecasts and spend analysis

• Why is it important?

  Understanding how much money is coming in, and where it is going out is the first fundamental step towards financial wellness.

  One of the most significant sources of financial stress is not knowing if there'll be enough money left at the end of the month. As cash usage continues to decline the increased use of 'Digital' money means its harder than ever to keep track of direct debits, BNPL repayments, ad hoc bills and spending on debit, credit cards or payment services like Paypal.

• How does it work?

  Our budgeting, forecasting and analysis features make getting those healthy foundations in place as easy and intuitive as possible.

  Users are encouraged to connect all of their spending accounts to give them a complete picture of their finances. Our technology can then identify income, regular bills and payments and the spending and income analysis helps build a very tangible, visual representation of what’s going where.

  Every transaction is categorised so that the customer can create and set spending budgets for things such as fuel for the car, the weekly food shop, clothes for the kids or home repairs. No matter what account or card is used to make a payment the category is identified and allocated to the correct budget so they can see where their money goes and, when they are in danger of going over budget and take avoiding action.

Personal Debt Manager

• Why is it important?

  UK adults owe £1.9t in personal debt. Failing to keep on top of debt can impact health, wellbeing and the ability to work.

  A study from the Royal College of Psychiatrists found that half of all adults with a debt problem also live with mental ill-health. This ranged from a consistent feeling of anxiety and low mood to a diagnosed mental health condition.

  Debt can be a considerable burden, made worse by dealing with it alone.

  Worrying about debt can affect sleep. Losing out on a good night’s sleep can not only affect mood and energy levels, it can also affect someone’s ability to work or have good relationships with friends and family.

  All of these things in turn can further add to debt problems.

• How does it work?

  Our Personal Debt Manager gives your customers a suite of tools to help them check, manage and adjust their spending so they stay in control of their income and outgoings.

  We know that people get better outcomes when when:

  • They regularly check income, outgoing and bank statements, and;

  • Adjust spending on non-essentials when money is tight

  Your customers can use Personal Debt Manager to connect all of their bank accounts, credit cards and loans in one place so they can check each and every transaction in real time. They’ll benefit from a range of tools, including Personal Balance Alerts, Spending Analysis, Regular Payments and Rent Recognition.

  By utilising these tools, your customers can:

  • Gain sight of where their money is going and where changes need to be made and set realistic budgets

  • Reduce the risk of missing a repayment as they have a full list of upcoming payments to help them plan in advance

  • Even build their credit score through Rent Recognition

  Eliminating debt is about more than the numbers - debt relief brings reduced stress and anxiety, improvements in cognitive functioning and changes in decision making. When someone clears their debt, it’s a significant life event.

  With Moneyhub, you can help them get there.

Emergency Cash Builder

• Why is it important?

  Be it building an emergency cash fund for whatever life throws at them, or saving towards that all important first home, our technology can help you become a significant force for financial good in your customers’ lives.

  With the Financial Conduct Authority reporting that nearly 13m UK adults have little capacity to withstand a financial shock, helping your customers build an emergency fund to weather a financial storm, or simply for a rainy day, can improve financial outcomes, build trust in your brand and deepen the relationship they have with your firm.

• How does it work?

  Moneyhub’s Emergency Cash Builder makes it easy for your customers to increase their financial resilience in three simple steps:

  1. Personalise: Choose a connected account in which the emergency cash fund will be created and give the fund a name. It could be simply an ‘emergency fund’, or something more personal, such as ‘my holiday fund’ or ‘Mum’s 60th birthday’. Customers can create multiple funds for different goals. After naming their emergency cash fund the customer will be prompted to set a target amount and time period over which they wish to save.

  2. Monitor: Each Emergency Cash Fund will automatically appear in the customer’s personal dashboard. They’ll see how much they’ve saved in total and how close they are to achieving their goal.

  3. Celebrate: Moneyhub’s dashboard view provides a visual measure of success. Overlay a nudge in the app or any other communications channel to help the customer celebrate their achievement and provide them with an onward journey.

  Customers can transfer money to their Emergency Cash Builder fund using their bank’s banking app or by creating a standing order. Or if enabled, they can use Moneyhub Open Banking payments technology to make a payment from within a Personal Financial Management app.

  When people have some savings to fall back on, their increased financial resilience leads to reduced stress and anxiety, a greater sense of choice and control and even higher self esteem. With Moneyhub, you can help your customers get there.

Benefits Finder

• Why is it important?

  According to Policy in Practice around 8 Million households in the UK are missing out on £16-19 billion in benefits every year. This works out at around £5k per household, every year - a potential lifeline for low-income households.

  In 2021, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Welfare at a Social Distance found that the most common reason why people miss their benefits is that they are unaware of the welfare benefits they are entitled to or assume that they are not eligible

  The main reasons people are not taking up benefits they are aware of:

  • Group A: 42% Wrongly assume they are not entitled

  • Group B: 39% Unaware of the range of benefits they could be entitled to

  • Group C: 19% Don’t apply because they are overwhelmed by the process, or find the stigma difficult to deal with

• How does it work?

  Description text goes hereWe’ve embedded InBest’s Benefits Finder into our Personal Financial Management solution, enabling people to identify benefits they may be eligible for based on their financial data.

  The benefits calculator can help those in Groups A and B to find out which benefits they are eligible for and the boost to their income they could receive.

  By incorporating the calculator into a financial management app, we can better serve Group C through personalised nudges and support articles, to help guide them through their benefits applications.

Pensions Finder

• Why is it important?

  It’s no secret that the pensions industry has an engagement problem. In 2020 the Financial Conduct Authority found 59% of adults contributing to a workplace DC pension have low, or very low pension engagement.

  Low levels of engagement correspond with low levels of understanding around pensions, and people are missing out on a better retirement.

  In fact, one in five pensioners is now living in relative poverty in the UK, with the number of financially insecure pensioners soaring to more than two million.

  With the government’s work on the Pensions Dashboard Programme stalled, our Pension Finder offers an interim tool to help people track down, understand and engage with their pensions.

• How does it work?

  Pension Finder allows people to build a full picture of their pension and make crucial retirement plans by connecting the Moneyhub app with their LinkedIn profile.

  It is designed to help pension managers, workplace pension providers, trustees or advisors help their customers engage with their pensions, encourage them to save more cash for retirement and understand the long-term implications of their current financial situation and savings strategies.

  Users can combine the pensions information found by analysing their career history with other information aggregated and calculated by Moneyhub in tools such as Moneyhub’s Lifestyle Modeller, which predicts people’s financial situation after a major event such as retirement to set lifestyle expectations.

  When people have a complete financial picture they are able to make better decisions or get the help they need. The Pension Finder seeks to make financial admin easier and ultimately encourage savers to take positive steps to secure their future financial wellness.

You can offer your customers any of these features as part of our fully customisable white label financial management app, or incorporate them into your own offering as widgets.

Employers: Now is the time to develop pension engagement and financial wellbeing strategies

As Pensions Awareness Week 2023 draws to a close, we’re reminded that  59% of adults contributing to a workplace DC pension have low, or very low pension engagement. Now is clearly the time for employers to be developing plans on how to better support staff with their retirement planning.

Low engagement isn’t good news for pension providers, individuals, nor the companies that employ them.

The benefits of high levels of pension engagement

Leading the charge in boosting pension awareness is Moneyhub partner Standard Life. Standard Life’s Retirement Voice 2022 found that people who dedicate time to pension planning, are reaping benefits to their wider financial wellbeing:

• They are almost three times more likely to feel more positive about their financial situation

• More likely to feel confident in making financial decisions

• More likely to enjoy retirement

But, despite these benefits, and the cost of living crisis encouraging more people to pay closer attention to their finances, their research shows that “when it comes to retirement planning, the vast majority of people (72%) are still doing little, if anything.”

So, what’s stopping people?

Within the report, Standard Life put these low levels of engagement down to the advice and guidance gap, lack of education and support, and feelings of overwhelm when people do come across guidance or information on their pensions.

People who are not engaging with their pensions tend to have poorer financial wellbeing overall, with 66% worrying they are not saving enough for when they’re older and 47% feeling less confident in their ability to make good financial decisions.

For individuals, this leads to feelings of stress and anxiety, which in turn can lead to reduced productivity and performance for the companies that employ them.

Responsible employers must take action

While employers are beginning to recognise that financial wellbeing goes beyond paying salaries, it is still the least common area included in HR wellbeing strategies. Yet, as Gail Izat, Workplace Managing Director at Standard Life states, “employers are perfectly positioned to provide the information and guidance people need, because they can incorporate it into their workplace pension offering.”

In the midst of the cost of living crisis and the widening UK savings gap, it’s more important than ever that employers demonstrate a commitment to the financial wellbeing of their staff.

The good news is, with Open Finance technology like ours, it’s never been easier.

Unlocking value for pension providers and employers with Open Finance

Pension engagement is one part of the puzzle. If people are struggling with debt, managing their day-to-day finances or even focused on saving money for something like their first home, paying attention to or contributing more to their pension will be low on their list of priorities. For people to have healthy finances in retirement, they must adopt healthy financial habits through their working lives.

Standard Life has understood this and incorporated Money Mindset, built on our Open Finance capabilities, into their workplace offering.

Setting pension providers, and in turn employers, apart

Incorporating an Open Finance proposition like Money Mindset truly sets Standard Life’s offering apart.

Money Mindset offers users a complete picture of their entire financial world (current accounts, savings, properties, investments, pensions and more) alongside forecasting tools and even a financial education hub.

Providers who adopt these solutions will be the ones who see higher levels of engagement from employers, really differentiating their offering in a crowded market. They can work with clients to augment Employer Value Propositions and bring a host of benefits to their end-users.

It’s win-win-win

Fostering a more financially literate and resilient workforce benefits all parties mentioned in this blog post. Individuals gain confidence in managing daily spending and unexpected costs, get greater control and understanding of where their money is coming and going out, and get on track for a secure and sustainable financial future into retirement.

Employers reap the rewards of higher productivity and performance, reduced absenteeism and employee stress or burnout and become more attractive to, and better at retaining, top talent.

And of course, pension providers benefit from primacy among workplace clients and members, higher level of engagement and increased opportunities to boost AUM through consolidation or higher contributions. It’s win-win-win!

Would you like to find out more about how Open Finance could benefit your business? Talk to one of our guides →

How can Open Finance help bridge the UK savings gap?

The UK savings gap is a hugely pressing issue. The amount and rate at which working people are saving money for retirement is at a significant disparity with the amount required for a desirable living standard in later life.

Deloitte projects that the savings gap in the UK will reach a staggering £350 billion by 2050. This highlights the urgency to address the issue and find effective solutions to ensure individuals are prepared for their financial future.

What can Financial Services do?

Various factors contribute to the UK savings gap; increasing living costs, consumer debt, and a lack of sufficient financial education. Encouragingly, efforts have been made by the government and financial institutions to address this issue by introducing legislative changes and initiatives aimed at promoting savings, such as auto-enrolment, increased ISA flexibility, and the Personal Savings Allowance, but there’s still more to be done.

Savings capacity depends upon people having available money. At Moneyhub, we call this available money Potential. It’s the money left after non-discretionary spend is subtracted from income.

By helping users increase their Potential we can enable them to put more money in savings, investments or their pensions.

Helping people get established

According to the FCA, over a third (34%) of UK adults have less than £1,000 in their savings. For 18-24 year olds, that figure jumps to 47%.

These shaky foundations mean that as people then move through their late twenties and into their thirties, they may struggle to build savings capacity for things like a first home. Many are renting and may have taken on debt to get through the day-to-day.

So how can Open Finance help people establish themselves financially with firm foundations to build upon? And how can it help financial services engage them?

Engagement tools to help people take control

Whilst no amount of tools can make up for chronic low income or help families who simply do not have enough money to make ends meet, most money advisors say that the key to staying in control is to monitor transactions, set and stick to budgets and avoid missing regular payments.

Our technology is designed to help people do just that. You can embed the following solutions within your own offering to help users manage their money better, and make it easy to do so:

• Financial MOT

• Budgets and Forecasts

• Credit Score Improver

• Emergency Cash Builder

• First Home Saver

• Benefits Finder

• Personal Debt Manager

• Complete Personal Financial Management App

Get in touch to discuss which solutions could work for you →

Real users, real stories, real difference

Don’t just take our word for it. Ed is a Moneyhub user and father of 3. He’s worked in hospitality, the NHS and a forklift driver, and was struggling with debts he’d built up as a younger man

He explained, “I’d built up a lot of debt on credit cards by overspending and basically not having an understanding of where my money was and simply not caring. I used to buy things I could not afford and at the end of each month I was scrabbling around for pennies”

“I really like Moneyhub’s spending budgets, in fact they were almost life changing for me. I’d miss transactions in my bank accounts and credit cards and then spend ages going back trying to work out where everything was going.”

“By creating spending categories for everything such as fuel, beer, coffees, haircuts…all sorts of things, I could work out trends using the spending and income analysis, which enabled me to compare month on month. Looking back over the year I could see what I spent on average so I used that to set budgets and then every time I got paid I was able to put aside money in my bank account knowing that everything I had left was spare money. Since then my finances have turned around completely”

From day-to-day, to planning for the future

Once Ed felt in control of his day-to-day spending, he naturally started engaging with his longer-term finances:

“I had connected my workplace pension to Moneyhub so when the pandemic started I could see my pension’s value. Every day I looked it was going down as share prices were going down. Before Moneyhub I’d never have known about my pension but because it’s so visual, seeing the graph is brilliant. In fact it surprised me just how quickly pensions can go up and it's made me want to pay in more, especially now I’ve got spare money at the end of the month”

Building financial resilience unlocks customers’ Potential

Open Finance makes it easy for people to engage with their finances where they might have felt overwhelmed before. With oversight of where money is coming in and going out, incremental changes can be made, which include putting more money aside for later life.

Open Finance also offers businesses the chance to create highly personalised customer journeys throughout their financial life, resulting in stickier customers with increased Potential, to go some way to bridging the UK savings gap.

Find out more about how our technology can help you unlock your customers’ Potential →

Why now is the time to innovate with Open Finance

The ‘Amazonification’ of financial services is truly a game changer for businesses and individuals alike. With Open Finance, businesses (in any industry) now have the opportunity to develop innovative propositions that use that sector’s resources, without the capital and regulatory burden of becoming a direct participant in the regulated financial services markets - just as Amazon Web Services has enabled the explosion of SaaS businesses over the last decade. 

Previously siloed aspects of financial services data, such as mortgages, consumer credit, bank accounts, investments, loans, savings, pensions and more can now be seamlessly connected thanks to the power of Open Finance and innovative TPPs (third party providers) such as Moneyhub.

As Angela Strange, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, predicts: “nearly every company will derive a significant portion of its revenue from financial services” - and in the not-too-distant future too.

What do we mean by ‘The Amazonification of businesses?’

Before we had Amazon Web services, if you had a brilliant idea you had to go out and buy equipment, find a building and spend ages wiring things together. All of this had to be done before building the first line of code. AWS flipped this on its head and now anyone with an idea can quickly and easily start a tech business. The same is now happening with financial services.

What is Open Finance and what benefit does it have?

When it comes to finances, there are three questions people tend to have:

1. What have I got?

2. What do I need?

3. And how do I get what I need?

Open Finance is a consumer content-driven approach to answering these questions by bringing your financial world into one place, and providing unique and relevant data, tools and insight.

In practice how can it be used?

Open Finance helps people solve real world problems. such as applying for a mortgage, saving, getting rid of debt, enabling payments, tax returns, and planning for career breaks, as well as even more technical challenges.

What is Open Banking?

Open Banking is built on top of the Payment Service Directive Two (PSD2). Open Banking has finally unlocked bank data and put it in the hands of its true owner - the business or consumer who owns the account. This has been a great first step for organisations towards true open data (and Open Finance) - something Moneyhub has always been working for.

Using Open Finance to help engage people with their pensions for Mercer Money

Mercer is the world’s largest outsourced asset management firm. They approached us with one core problem: “pensions modelling tools are typically over-complicated, arduous and stressful to use, and provide no incentive for people to come back and manage their finances.” We set out to tackle this problem using our technology to build the Mercer Money platform - offering Mercer customers a complete financial wellness tool.

Using Open Finance to support ethical investing with The Big Exchange

The Big Exchange (co-founded by The Big Issue) are building a community focussed on making a positive impact through an inclusive financial system that is available to anyone. We used Moneyhub technology to power their digital wallet and their marketplace - offering a win-win scenario where The Big Exchange can increase assets under management, the consumer is happy with returns, and the world benefits as a result of these investments doing good.

How technology can totally overhaul Mortgage affordability checking - making it simpler, fairer and faster

A building Society came to us with a vision: “there must be a fairer, quicker and more cost effective way to run affordability checks on customers”. Open Finance makes it possible to truly understand all aspects of a customer's financial world - well beyond what is visible from traditional credit reports. The result is mortgage affordability checking that is faster and simpler than traditional approaches and can say ‘yes’ to more people, offering a fairer outcome for applicants.

Get in touch

To find out how we can help your business innovate with Open Finance.

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Open Finance drives greater transparency of pensions and investments impact

The issues of pension engagement and the impact of investment are coming to a head with campaigns like MakeMyMoneyMatter, the need to build back better after Covid-19 and regulatory change. It is no coincidence.

More than 10 million people are contributing to workplace pensions following auto-enrolment, but engagement and contribution levels remain low. Traditional ways to engage people in later-life planning have not worked. And this matters, as the vast majority of people are at risk of lower living standards in retirement.

Bridging the engagement gap

One way to bridge the engagement gap is to talk about the things people say they care about. A range of studies, including the FCA, show people - especially younger people - are more likely to engage, save more and take some investment risk when their pensions are responsibly invested.  

Percentage of members willing to engage, contribute or take more risk if pension savings are responsibly invested - Data source: FCA

All investment has impact, and regulators, scheme managers, providers and members are increasingly incorporating environmental, social and governance factors as part of prudent risk management. Now, schemes’ statement of investment principles have to state how they account for financially material considerations, including Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations like climate change.   

The overwhelming majority - more than 90% of master trust pension scheme members - are invested in their providers’ default fund. Default funds provide many important protections for pension members. So why not tell scheme members about the real world impact their pension contributions are having while invested for their future within the default fund? This Quietroom video shares pension savers’ positive reaction to seeing their pension is invested in housing, hospitals and renewable energy - and horror at the thought it could be funding tobacco or coal.

A recent DCIF report showed 80% of DC savers want their pension investments to do some good as well as provide them with a financial return. Younger cohorts and women are particularly interested in the impact of their money and ESG issues (Ref. 1) so there is an opportunity to have an outsized effect engaging with these groups that have often been underrepresented and underserved.

“A recent DCIF report showed 80% of DC savers want their pension investments to do some good as well as provide them with a financial return.”

Using technology to make it personal 

Open Banking and Open Finance are secure data-sharing frameworks that enable data from utilities companies, ESG ratings and investment fund holdings to be combined with financial data sets to support a range of propositions to resonate with people.  

While millions of people are in the same default fund, a provider could share personalised communications based around members' preferences. For example, two members invested in the same default fund could receive different digital annual statements: highlighting the amount of renewable energy generated, or tonnes of waste diverted from landfill for a member with environmental concerns, while another member in the same default hears about improvements in diverse board representation or gender pay gaps. Across millions of members, or retail investors, those same preferences could inform future proposition development around thematic default funds or retail investment funds based around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Examples are emerging through The Big Exchange (co-founded by The Big Issue) and tickr. 

The Big Exchange and the UN Sustainable Development Goals

An aggregated view of someone’s personal finances is an essential part of sound financial planning. Including ESG ratings and fund holdings into this view helps informed decision-making and sound investment diversification. For example, a holistic view of pension, ISA and general investment accounts could reveal a concentration in particular sectors or firms. Sugi is the UK's first app to check the carbon impact of investments and compare investments across a range of funds and platforms to help consumers’ build a greener portfolio.

Read more about Sugi here

With the data capabilities in place, Open Finance enables firms to cost-effectively deliver a level of personalisation and insight to consumers previously the preserve of conversations between high-net worth individuals and their wealth managers.

Footprinting everyday spending

Companies such as Co-Go are already integrating carbon and transaction data to create a carbon footprint tracker for everyday spending. Elsewhere, integrating utilities bill data could show the real payback for a green retrofit of your home, for example.

Cost-effective technology brings transparency

For asset managers, these alternative data sets can not only inform future proposition development around thematic default funds or retail investment funds, they can also be used in equity and fixed income research. More than $30 trillion - which is more than a third of the world’s professionally-managed assets - are in ESG and impact investments. Yet, as noted in a recent Columbia Threadneedle report, ESG data has been hampered by a lack of verification as researchers have relied on voluntary disclosure in annual financial and CSR reporting. Open Banking and Open Finance could provide “alternative datasets” to help “minimise reliance on voluntary disclosure”.  

Open Finance provides transparency for customers — be they individuals or companies — and employees to align their purchasing, saving and investment choices with their values. Technology, member appetite and regulatory support together mean best in class providers are tantalisingly close to bridging the pensions engagement gap.

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Author

Hannah Gilbert

Hannah is a Client Director with senior industry experience in financial services, telecoms, public and not-for-profit organisations. Hannah has co-authored policy papers including “Pensions for the Next Generation: Communicating What Matters” and has consultancy experience in sustainability, responsible investment and social enterprise. With two Masters (Economics and Sustainable Tourism), Hannah is on the EMBA programme at Cass Business School and Women in FinTech Powerlist 2019.

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References

1. https://update.lgim.com/dc-esg and https://www.ii.co.uk/analysis-commentary/most-britons-dont-know-whether-pension-line-their-values-ii513951

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