What is open banking and how can it help you?

As well as giving you your credit score and credit report for free, forever, we want to make you feel calm and in control of your finances. That’s why Switch & Save, BetterScore and Triple Lock use your money habits to find the best deals for you.

When you use our new features, we might ask you to link your bank accounts to your ClearScore account using something called open banking. We understand it might sound a bit confusing, so here’s everything you need to know.

In 2018, the government introduced open banking regulations. These gave you the power to securely link your bank accounts and share your financial information with regulated apps and websites.

Open banking is designed to improve the flow of information between financial organisations such as banks and credit companies, to help you save and spend better. Lots of apps use this technology to help you manage your money better – you might have seen budgeting apps such as Snoop and Money Dashboard, which let you see all of your bank accounts in one place.

Open banking uses your income and spending details to show lenders whether you could afford to take out credit. This saves you having to answer loads of questions and means you won’t have to send paper bank statements in the post.

Letting us look at your everyday transactions, such as your salary, bills and general spending, provides a clearer picture of your income and spending.

This could help you

• See a wider range of credit products
• Get a lower interest rate
• Secure a pre-approved credit card, loan or car finance deal with our Triple Lock guarantee

This is because if a lender sees that you always have money left over at the end of the month, they’ll feel confident that you’re likely to always pay your credit card off on time. So, they’ll think of you as low risk to lend to. Being low risk means low interest rates, which save you money in the long run.

This detailed picture of your finances also allows us to give you tailored tips on how to improve your credit score. Because a better score means better deals that could save you money.

We’ll always ask your permission before we link your bank account through open banking. Linking your bank accounts to your ClearScore account is completely safe and secure – we do everything to protect your privacy and we never sell your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data to third parties. It stays with us.

You can also opt out and unlink your account whenever you want to – you don't have to sign up for a set amount of time.

When it comes to linking your bank accounts, we want you to be sure about how it could help you take control of your finances.

We’ve helped more than 19 million people feel more confident about their finances so far. Join them and get your credit score and credit report for free every week – and by free, we mean free.