Open Banking Data Partner Request for Information Starter Kit

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To better understand how to make a smart open banking data partner decision, Cornerstone Advisors spoke with bank and fintech executives who have gone through the process of evaluating open banking data aggregation vendors, distilling the insights into six recommendations:

Following are the critical questions you should ask to ensure you are selecting a data partner to support your open banking strategies.

Company and Strategy

• What is your organization’s mission and strategy?
• Explain how your short- and long-term strategies advance Open
• What are the greatest challenges the industry needs to overcome over the next 3-5 years? How do you plan to help overcome these challenges?
• How do you differentiate from other data partners?
• Who do you consider your top 2-3 competitors?
• Why should we partner with you?

Capabilities

Connectivity

• Coverage:

  • How many connections do you have with financial institutions and fintechs to access and aggregate their data?
  • What kinds of connections do you offer (i.e., OAuth, direct API connections, sanctioned/whitelisted scrapes, screen scraping, )?
  • What is the percentage of each connection type?
• Quality: 
  • How reliable are your connections with these providers for both first-time account connections and recurring connections? (i.e., percent of successful connections and the length of time it takes to connect)
  • What kind of data is accessed and how often?
  • How is data stored and protected?
  • What are your security and privacy policies?
  • What is the connection experience for the end customer?
• Permission Management
  
  • How do you collect and manage the end customer’s permission to access and use their data?
  • Do you provide a consent dashboard or other management tools to the end customer?
  • Are we able to monitor and manage connections to third parties from our system?

Insights

• How do you cleanse and categorize data once it is gathered?
• What attributes do you provide to enrich the data (i.e., merchant information, etc.)?
• What is your percentage of accuracy for data categorization and cleansing?
• Do you add any additional context to enrich the data? If so, please provide examples.
• Do you provide any capabilities that can look across data providers to deliver new insights?

Experiences

• What are the primary use cases you believe you excel at with data? Please provide concrete examples with measurable results.
• What types of experiences do you enable through your solutions (i.e., personal finance management, mobile banking, etc.)?
• What types of pre-built widgets or SDKs (software development kits) do you offer?
• What capabilities are you building for the future of Open Finance?

Buyer and Supplier Relationships

• What is your process for onboarding new connections with additional financial institutions and fintechs?
• How do you ensure connections with various providers remain stable? Please provide examples.
• Please provide three referenceable clients.

Customer Service and Support

• What is your process when there is a service issue or broken connection?
• How do you manage incoming calls we receive from our end customers related to connecting accounts? Do you offer a support line for us to redirect them to you?
• Do you provide proactive notices when there is expected downtime or anticipated connectivity failures?
• What SLAs or response times do you guarantee to resolve issues quickly?
• Who will be my primary contact for customer service and support?
• What is your approach to notifying end customers when connections are unavailable or broken?

API Roadmap and Interoperability

• Please provide details on any APIs that you build or maintain and how they interoperate with other
• What is your roadmap for your APIs?
• What services or support do you offer to collaborate with our internal IT teams on any additional needs?
• How are your clients using your APIs to create unique digital experiences? Please provide a minimum of three
• How do you typically work with or integrate with other data aggregators?

Contracting / Pricing Model

• What is your pricing model?
• What price breaks do you offer for larger volumes?
• Do you offer pricing flexibility as usage grows over time?
• What is your minimum contract price or length of time?
• Do you have a vendor exclusivity clause in your contracts? (If yes, please provide.)
• Do you have a preferred vendor status in your contracts? (If yes, please provide.)