Bud and ANZ NZ sign AI deal to build a more transparent lending process

By Edil Corneille

London-based FinTech firm Bud has signed a deal with ANZ NZ bank, in a move that marks the beginning of a strategic push in the Australia and New Zealand markets. The deal will see Bud providing the bank with the capability to ingest and categorise data from prospective borrowers’ bank statements in a bid to streamline the lending process and increase transparency.

The move is driven, in part, by changes to regulation in New Zealand. New regulations under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act require lenders to capture and verify borrowers’ income and expenses in detail in affordability assessments. The rules aim to ensure lenders are satisfied that repayments on loans won’t place borrowers into substantial hardship. The new rules are expected to add significant manual overhead to lending decisions for a majority of the lenders.

ANZ NZ has chosen to automate elements of the process to create a simpler and more transparent experience for customers.

For the loan application process, bankers will upload statements to comply with regulations. Bud’s Intelligence tool will be used to enrich that statement data, identifying and categorising income and expenses, and return a summary to ANZ NZ for use in its affordability.

Ed Maslaveckas, Bud’s CEO expounded, “We’ve seen Open Banking start to have a significant impact on the credit market in the UK, so we’re obviously excited to be the first to roll out similar technology in New Zealand. We’ve put a huge amount of effort into creating technology that offers leading innovation whilst maintaining the highest standards of privacy and security infrastructure demanded by banks. We’ve invested heavily in our intelligence capabilities over the last year, developing the granularity and accuracy that institutions need to shape these journeys and developing tools that allow us to quickly port that performance level to new markets. Aside from our obvious excitement to be working with such an established brand, it’s particularly encouraging to see the work we put into these two areas start to become a benchmark for those fintechs who want to work at enterprise scale.”

ANZ NZ Chief Information Officer Mike Bullock enunciated, “ANZ NZ is committed to progressively utilising open banking and open data to deliver better products and services for our customers. Bud’s expertise with open banking technology in the UK market will benefit customers in New Zealand by streamlining lending processes and increasing transparency.”

Importantly, the functionality BUD provides will also enable us to continue to meet our responsibilities as a responsible lender, without compromising customer experience. We’ll be able to collect and verify the extensive income and expenses information the new consumer credit regulations require, so we can continue to provide the right outcomes for our borrowers without unnecessarily slowing down the lending process.”