I’ve been gradually losing connections for the last few months.
In no particular order:
Natwest - savings
HSBC - credit card and savings
TSB - nothing any more (can’t connect)
Halifax/Bank of Scotland - regular savings now “closed”, normal savings still connected
Tesco - gave up with the text messages
Nationwide - savings
Revolut also not connecting today for some reason
Almost more accounts not working than are working.
I know the switch from scraping to open banking is a huge task, but it feels like it’s reached some kind of crisis point, where the effort as a user to maintain connections is just too great. I’m basically back to a spreadsheet.
Now, I know there won’t be many users with nearly as many connections. But then surely it must be even worse for them, if one of their 2-3 banks stops connecting…
NatWest - From what we know, they have no plans to support savings accounts through Open Banking and we no longer are able to use our previous connection methods.
Our hands are tied on this as the bank is under no obligation to provide support Nevertheless, we will keep pushing!
HSBC - These are coming online in the next few weeks. HSBC has recently released support for these accounts so TrueLayer is working on getting this implemented
TSB - TSB has scheduled a fix for this on the 26th February as it’s an issue with their app-to-app flow
Halifax/BOS - Same as NatWest
Tesco - We’re still waiting to move to Open Banking for these guys. Once moved, you won’t need to re-authenticate every time
Nationwide - Same as NatWest
Revolut - Resolved
In general, banks are still trying to iron out the kinks in their Open Banking connectors which is why things feel like they’re always breaking. Behind the scenes, we’re all super frustrated too
Sounds like it’s going to be a while yet before open banking settles down.
Longer term, the Savings section is going to be a bit empty if the banks stick to their position. What is Emma’s plan for savings accounts that may never be available via open banking?
If it could settle down quicker that’d make my life 10x easier
To be fair, the banks are working through the bugs when we raise with them albeit what feels to be as slow as possible.
At the moment, we don’t have any features tied to savings accounts. This means they’re there mostly for user reference.
Our plan for savings is to continue to pester the banks. Because it may take a while to get through to them, we’re concentrating all our efforts on a two-fold approach.
Improving what we have (simplifying, expanding, reconstructing, removing etc)
Building more useful features that help you make better use of the data we do have access to (current and credit accounts)
However, we are talking about an EU regulation that says they are not obliged to share bank accounts that don’t have payment functionality. This might change post-brexit, but we don’t know yet.
Our internal position is that for savings accounts, despite being nice having the balance in the app, are not relevant to any feature we currently have (or that creates engagement/interaction); so it’s not a huge loss for us.
It would have been a disaster for current accounts and credit cards.
Out of curiosity, and if you know - how is Yolt able to provide the connection to Natwest Savings accounts (and Marcus for example) - I assume this is still through credentials sharing? Why not use the same method?
I think some banks are also being very anti-competitive.
So, when I sign in to Halifax, I can see all my Bank of Scotland accounts (current, savings, credit card), and even though I didn’t actively link the accounts. I’m guessing that Halifax would also show Lloyds savings accounts if I linked Lloyds.
I don’t see how they can argue it’s fine to share savings account data between themselves, but not with aggregators.
@Gaoler if you look at it from the banks perspective, how does sharing data with us benefit them?
Imagine an app flags that you’re paying a lot of bank fees and you change banks because of it, the bank has lost income. If an app flags your credit cards have a high-interest rate, suggests other credit cards with a lower interest rate and you leave, the bank has lost income. If an app alerts you that you might go into overdraft and you move money to stop this from happening, the bank has lost money.
It makes sense for banks to share data between their own banking brands because it’s a nice user experience - there is also a low risk they’re going to lose money from it.
From a banks viewpoint, giving customers a greater understanding of their money by sharing their data with third parties means they can’t hoodwink their customers as easily - this makes it harder to make that sweet cash money
Also important to note, Open Banking wasn’t a bank lead initiative so expect them to fight, kick and scream their way to transparency
Brexit will help on this (not being political here), but Savings accounts are disappearing due to PSD2. In a post-brexit scenario, we don’t have to follow or comply to EU regulations. It will still take sometime cause PSD2 is now part of british law.
Nevertheless, we will keep pushing!
