Equifax opens its data to the British Public utilities

The British credit rating agency Equifax has partnered with United Utilities, a group specialized in water treatment and distribution, to offer an Open Banking service. This is a first for the sector and another illustration of the scope of the technology.

THE FACTS

• The UK's leading water company is now integrating Equifax's open-banking technology solution.

• This integration is designed to enable a water supplier to implement a real-time verification solution for a customer's revenue.

• Technically, this implementation relies on a connection to the United Utilities' customers' bank accounts. The water supplier is thus able to automatically detect the eligibility of its customers for a particular tariff.

• Prior consent from customers is still required for the case-by-case application of the solution.

KEY FIGURES

• According to a December 2019 report from OFWAT (the non-departmental government department in charge of regulating the water sector) up to three million people in the UK are struggling to pay their water bills.
• Water companies, including United Utilities, are required to ensure that at least 7% of households are offered a social tariff.

CHALLENGES

• Offer a new use case: This is the first time Open Banking has been applied to the water treatment and distribution sector to optimize pricing and customer service.

• Reduce administrative tasks: The revenue verification feature is activated when the customer is in communication with a United Utilities advisor, for example when subscribing or updating a contract. Open Banking thus becomes a tool for automating income analysis so that the customer does not have to send supporting documents and the advisor does not have to record these documents manually.

• Facilitating social procedures: The first concrete use of this partnership is to speed up the application process for social rates for beneficiaries. The pandemic has contributed to the impoverishment of part of the population.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• As a scoring specialist, financial data management is Equifax's core business. Its legitimacy in the democratization of Open Banking solutions is therefore obvious.

• Equifax has thus long partnered with various players to support this trend. In 2018, the group signed with HSBC to put Open Banking at the service of credit, then with Thinking Capital to offer a reverse factoring solution to SMEs.