3 Ways Open APIs Are impacting the Financial Planning Process

forward-looking financial APIs

If you’re serving the financial industry, you’ve likely heard of Application Programming Interfaces or API. Though it’s quite common for financial advisors and lenders to have heard of APIs but maybe not fully understand the importance of this technology. From weather forecasts to travel booking to online transactions, every interaction uses APIs to improve user experience across various industries.

In a nutshell, An API is a set of programming code that allows two applications to communicate with one another. This helps develop collaboration between two or more technology providers to extend the capabilities of their products and services.

Wondering how open APIs can impact the financial planning process? Keep reading while we’re sharing the top three ways APIs provide a great opportunity for financial organizations, lenders, advisors, and their clients.

APIs Make Advisors Smarter:

forward-looking financial API

With the help of APIs, financial advisors are able to access the most precise, accurate, and up-to-date data of their customers. In financial institutions like ForwardAI can get the most robust accounting and financial data of their borrowers for small business lending. This technology enables lenders and advisors to see deep critical insight into their customers’ financial health and offer the right loan to the right person at the right time.

Lenders and advisors, with the help of APIs, can be confident they are getting the most accurate data and making informed lending decisions based on real-time information.

APIs Transform Customer Experience Expectations

forward-looking financial API

A top-notch customer experience means providing a better service and meeting their unique needs and preferences. Under the current system, the data needed to provide financial products such as business loans siloed across dozens of systems. Without a better way to access this data, lenders cannot underwrite a loan because they can’t assess risk accurately.

Through financial data APIs, lenders and financial advisors can solve this problem by providing access to over 165+ cash flow data points, of which 70% are forward-looking, about an SMB’s future financial viability...more than any other service provider in the market today. This helps lenders better understand their customers’ needs, provide customized products and services and ultimately make a great customer relationship.

APIs Liberate Financial Organizations

forward-looking financial API

The most powerful aspect of an API is that it’s extremely dynamic. With the help of APIs, financial institutions can access the most accurate and real-time data from third-party providers, create customized workflows seamlessly, integrate with other technology providers, or even use third-party capabilities within their user experience - things that would have required a significant amount of time, efforts and money to build in house from scratch.

APIs not only make advisors smarter and transform customer experience but can also help in making intelligent financial decisions across the organization. For instance, imaging a bank is struggling to determine the creditworthiness of their borrowers due to insufficient data. With the Accounting data API, lenders can see critical forward-looking cash flow data and cross-validate borrower data to improve creditworthiness and reduce risk with small business lending.

Want to learn more about how forward-looking financial APIs can help make your lending process less complicated and build a better experience for your financial institutions and clients? Book a free demo for Financial Data API.

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