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Open Banking for business finance.
Open Banking lets your company share read-only access to its bank statements with a lender, securely and for a limited time. This guide explains what it is, what the lender can and cannot see, and why it makes an affordability check faster and more accurate.
What Open Banking actually is
A UK framework that lets a business authorise a third party to read its bank data through a secure connection, without handing over its login.
Open Banking is the UK system that lets you give a regulated third party permission to read your bank account information directly from the bank, through a secure connection. It grew out of the Competition and Markets Authority's 2017 order and the regulatory framework around it, and it is now a routine part of how business finance is assessed.
The key idea is consent. Nothing is read until the company's authorised signatory actively approves it, and approval is given to the bank — not to the lender. The lender never sees your online-banking username or password. Instead, you log in at your own bank in the usual way and confirm the specific, read-only access you are granting. The connection is built on the same security standards banks use for their own services.
What is read — and what is not
For lending, the access is read-only and scoped to the account information that evidences affordability. It cannot move money.
| Read | Not read or not possible |
|---|---|
| Account name and the account number on the statement | Your online-banking username or password |
| Transaction history — money in and money out, with dates | The ability to move, withdraw or send any money |
| Current and available balances | Any change to your account, payees or settings |
| Regular incomings and outgoings over the shared period | Personal accounts you do not explicitly connect |
The access used for a lending decision is account information only: a read of the statements. It is a window, not a door. The separate Open Banking capability that can initiate a payment is a different permission, and it is not what a lender uses to assess your company. Access is also time-boxed — granted for a defined period and capable of being withdrawn by you at any point, directly with your bank.
Why it speeds an affordability check
Statement data straight from the bank is current, complete and unedited — so the assessment is both faster and fairer.
Affordability is the heart of a responsible lending decision: can the company comfortably carry the repayments out of its actual cash flow? The clearest evidence of that is the recent history of the business bank account. There are two ways to provide it — upload PDF statements, or share them by Open Banking — and the second is faster on both sides.
- No collation. You skip downloading, saving and uploading several months of PDFs. One consent at your bank does it.
- Current to the day. The data is live rather than a month-old export, so the assessment reflects where the business is now.
- Complete and tamper-evident. Because it comes straight from the bank, there is nothing missing and nothing edited — which protects an honest applicant from being second-guessed.
- Quicker decisions. Straightforward, well-evidenced applications can be decided promptly, because the affordability picture is in front of the assessor immediately.
None of this replaces judgement. Open Banking supplies the evidence; a person still weighs it. For the underwriting approach behind that, see credicorp.co.uk/how-we-lend.
How Credicorp uses it
Open Banking is offered as the convenient route, never the only one. The choice stays with the company.
Credicorp Limited offers read-only Open Banking access as a way to share the business bank statements that support an application, alongside the option to upload PDFs instead. The company decides which route it prefers. Where access is shared, it is scoped to account information for the affordability check and can be withdrawn at the company's bank at any time.
Two points worth keeping in view. First, the borrower is the company, and the account that matters is the company's business bank account — consistent with the body-corporate-only lending position set out at /lending-and-regulation/. Second, the screening that runs alongside affordability uses the business credit bureaux, not the director's personal file — covered in building business creditworthiness.
The operator describes its Open Banking handling, signed PDFs and audit log on its technology page: credicorp.co.uk/our-technology, and the surrounding decision process at credicorp.co.uk/how-we-lend.
Common questions, briefly
- Can a lender take money using this? No. Account-information access is read-only. It cannot move funds or change anything on the account.
- Does the lender get my banking password? No. You authenticate at your own bank; the credentials are never shared.
- How long does access last? It is time-limited, and you can withdraw it at any point directly with your bank.
- Do I have to use it? No. Uploading PDF statements remains available; Open Banking is simply the quicker route.
- Whose account is read? The company's business bank account — because the company is the borrower.
Where to go next
- Building business creditworthiness — the company-level record a lender reads.
- The cash conversion cycle — what the statements reveal about timing.
- Choosing the right business finance — matching finance to need.
- Credicorp — our technology and how we lend.
- The products, lending and regulation, and the glossary.