Hi Monzo Team,
I’m Head of Development at a fellow fintech which provides point-of-sale loans to people with thin credit files (feel free to look me up on Linkedin adamprescott01).
Our ground-breaking decision engine takes various factors into account from Open Banking and Credit Reference Agencies to allow people to obtain credit who would otherwise be denied.
Currently we can’t underwrite loans for Monzo customers because Monzo aren’t contributors to Vocalink or Equifax leaving us unable to automate some of our check. Monzo isn’t the only challenger bank we’ve seen with this issue, included in this is also Starling and Revolut.
I’ve gone full Monzo myself and I love the service, so I’d love to see Monzo supporting these Credit Reference Agency feeds, and at the very least adding Vocalink, I hope this is something you can get in the pipeline soon
Feel to message me directly if you would like more details.
I’m obviously not going to pretend I know anything or tell you about your seemingly very skilled job, I’m just interested given Starling reports to Equifax in as much as it’s on people’s Equifax credit reports, why it is that you can’t, presuming it’s not some sort of secret? Are there different levels of reporting, or is it something completely different to just reporting customers accounts to them that they’ve not done? Or is it the Vocalink bit that’s the issue?
Very nosey I appreciate, but this is the place to be nosey
Yes, there are different types of reports available, when you check your credit report, you’ll probably see things such as soft-search and anti-money laundering (AML) checks. All of these reports contain different characteristics which tell lenders your finacial history, linked addresses and your most active bank account, it’s not too different to what you see in your credit report except it’s in a computer readable format. One such check is account validation which forms part of the AML check. Starling currently reports the negative balance in your account, i.e. whether you’re in your overdraft and by how much.
Random question regarding credit scores. Just checking my ClearScore(Equifax) and noticed none of my current accounts show under Current Accounts (Barclays for example). Only credit cards.
Should the equifax be bringing in legacy current accounts too?
Good question. The AML checks have different formats depending on the Credit Reference Agency (CRA) supplying it, I believe they all fallback on Vocalink to verify bank account/sortcode as this is essentially what powers the Faster Payments, BACS, and LINK network. This forms part of the central system which routes payments to different banks in the UK.
Though I don’t work in the payments industry, so I don’t know the data Vocalink requires to be able to propagate account validation back up to the various CRAs. I can only see that data is missing from Monzo and other challenger banks preventing validation by some CRAs
Yes it is, though it’ll be a different feed Monzo need to use. This is essentially the product most lenders will be using or something in the CRA chain will depend on it https://www.vocalink.com/downloads-and-media/reports/account-verification/
I reckon, there are a few lenders who would auto-reject if they’re not receiving anything from this feed, with the odd one who would send to manual underwriting.
Luckily, I’ve not applied for any credit products since I switched from my RBS account, so I’ve not experienced any auto-rejections.
Monzo, any line on Equifax and the very valid, very succinct issues that adamprescott has raised?
My other half recently took out a loan with a challenger bank, LiveLend, who also were unable to use his Monzo account for the verification or depositing of the funds.
It is a very good job that he banks with Santander and hasn’t gone Full-Monzo, as if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to take out the loan.
My Equifax score is suffering from having gone Full Monzo as there are now no active current accounts on my Equifax credit file. This prevents lenders who primarily use Equifax (Barclaycard, Capitalone, Livelend, et. al) from performing an accurate financial assessment of me.
What’s your intended plan of action moving forwards?
