We are pleased to announce that QuickFile is now officially registered with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). We started the FCA process in early 2018 in order to take advantage of the new Open Banking APIs. This will provide us with a direct link to 9 of the UK’s largest banks for the purpose of synchronising bank transaction data.
It has always been an imperative of ours to seek out direct integrations with established and challenger banks in the UK. With FCA approval we are now on-track to deliver direct banking integrations with the following UK banking entities.
Barclays Bank plc
HSBC Group
Lloyds Banking Group plc
Nationwide Building Society
Northern Bank Limited, trading as Danske Bank
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc
Santander UK plc (in Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
AIB Group (UK) plc trading as First Trust Bank in Northern Ireland
Bank of Ireland (UK) plc
What does this mean?
There are several benefits to working directly with the banks for importing transaction data.
No need to manually initiate bank feed imports or supply one time codes. The feeds will just run overnight in the background. This will eliminate the need for one time codes, per import, as is currently the case with HSBC.
No need to entrust bank login credentials with 3rd party entities. New Open Banking APIs provide a safe and secure way for you to provide time-limited authorisation for strictly controlled activities.
Faster more intuitive setup. No intermediary. Setup is authorised through a direct link from QuickFile to your bank.
More effective recognition and filtering of duplicates. This should allow us to remove fixed delays on feeds where one transaction can be presented on multiple days with different descriptions.
What next?
We will now collaborate with Open Banking to begin work on the direct APIs for those banks listed above.
As the scope of Open Banking is widened, other banking providers will no doubt join the scheme. A number of the key challenger banks such as Starling, Tide, Revolut etc have gone down the route of developing their own APIs. We have already launched direct integrations with a number of these partners and will continue to offer the widest support for the challenger banks.
It doesn’t look like Metro are part of Open Banking at the moment (there’s a list in the Open Banking FAQ). But we are more than happy to include them should this change.
It may be worth getting in touch with them to see what their current position is.
I should say Metro Commercial works well with Yodlee bank feed.
I set up a second user to the bank account with view only access, so if there was any compromise in security from the third party the account is still safe.
Works well.
Just as a quick follow up. Metro Banking do intend to mirror the Open Banking scheme and will mostly likely join in time. We are in conversation already with Metro Bank and they are developing direct APIs that we will eventually be able to utilise.
As you can see from the above, we became FCA Registered 19 days ago, which is a big step towards this. Unfortunately the Open Banking feeds couldn’t be started until this was approved due to regulatory restrictions. It’s still an active development and our team are hard at work on this side of things.
As soon as we have any updates in this area, we will definitely share it with the community.
Does this announcement also include Cater Allen Private Bank (part of Santander Group)?
They’re in the process of rolling out new systems which will support Open Banking so whilst they may not be quite ready yet, it’s coming imminently (so I’m told).
Each bank has to be added individually. There is an on-going process of adding these banks, and Santander is one of the ones supported. I will need to double check on the situation with Cater Allen, but if they support Open Banking, it’s likely they’ll be added in the future.
Cater Allen are not quite ready with their live Open Banking interface at this time. I’ve asked them to let me know their current timelines for delivery. I will update you in due course.
Any chance you have an update on this? I’ve been told that there’s a large migration happening in a couple of weeks time to move the majority of CA customers over to their new banking platform which supports Open Banking. It was delayed last year but it appears they’re ready to go now.
We’re currently working alongside CA on their managed rollout. We hit a few snags in December which will require their input. I’ve just put a chase on this so hopefully we’ll be able to get this implemented in the next couple of weeks. I’d say we’re 80% there now.
