Intelliflo’s roll-out of open banking hailed as ‘huge opportunity’ for advice firms

24 September 2020

Intelliflo has rolled out Open Banking to all of its advisers in a move it says will enable them to provide their clients with a “holistic view of their entire financial portfolio.”

According to the technology provider, Open Banking provides advisers with a “better and more realistic” understanding of their clients’ incomings and outgoings and spending habits. In the three weeks since Intelliflo launched the initiative, advisers have identified around £20 million of held away assets.

Clients will be able to link their current accounts, credit cards and savings accounts to the Personal Finance Portal so they can see all their finances in one place and set monthly spending budgets. Clients will also be able to see transactions and account history of any account added.

Nick Eatock, CEO, Intelliflo (pictured), says: “This technology is revolutionising the financial services industry, delivering new products that enable people to better manage their money. As the number of consumers using Open Banking through money management apps is on the rise, and the quality of this experience is improving, we’re pleased to be bringing this into the financial planning process.

“Since we announced our plans to launch Open Banking last year, holistic financial planning has become more important than ever. As we enter a recession, many will be relying on their adviser to keep their finances on track to meet their long term goals. We look forward to developing this functionality even further with plans already in place to incorporate new features.”

Ian McKenna, director and founder of the Finance Technology Research Centre (left), welcomed Intelliflo’s move into Open Banking, hailing it a “step forward” in the way people are able to access and interact with their finances.

McKenna comments: “Open Banking services will allow people to view their month-to-month income and expenditure side-by-side with their long-term savings. It has enormous potential to help people save more, especially when nudging and other behavioural finance techniques can be applied through these platforms.”

According to McKenna, the technology also presents a “huge opportunity” for advisers to deliver better advice outcomes.

“Over one third of the IFA sector now has the capability to offer a highly functional client portal service that can provide details of the clients’ day-to-day finance via Open Banking, alongside information on their long-term savings. Advisers can now offer a far better experience to their client than they can get from their banks, which do not have access to long-term savings data.”

He adds: “Ironically, the Government’s failure to deliver on a pensions dashboard has turned out to be a major benefit for advisers who use Open Banking to access such data and use it to inform and enhance conversations with their clients. At the current rate, pensions dashboards are still a good four years away.

“This will put banks at a serious commercial disadvantage over the next few years, which by the same token provides a huge opportunity for adviser firms and especially those using Intelliflo.”

Professional Paraplanner