New features for 2024

NestEgg has had a very busy 2024 so far. Not only has the launch of our award-winning Broker Platform been a success, but we’ve also been announcing lots of new features for our partner lenders. Here is a roundup of the latest releases. Some have been made available in the last couple of months and a few are due shortly. And this only takes us until the start of the summer. There’s much more on the way!

Loan Matching

Loan matching makes it easier for applicants to find the right loan.

Lenders can link qualification for products to specific criteria e.g. being employed by a payroll partner or living in a particular housing association. In addition:

• Use soft credit checks to see if an applicant would qualify before they apply.
• Select which data to use for different types of borrowers or product, e.g. credit or Open Banking only.
• Update joining criteria and launch new products, directly from the NestEgg dashboard in minutes.

All of the above functionality is also available through the API. In other words, lenders can continue to use their own front end application process and still enjoy the benefits from our award-winning Decision Engine.

Soft credit checks

NestEgg is now running 1,000’s of soft credit checks each month. This is a lower cost way to screen out declines, with 1 in 3 being prevented from applying in full.

Furthermore, soft checks are more attractive for borrowers conscious of their credit score. Being able to see if you’d be accepted with no negative impact on credit score is visibly driving more new member applications.

Risk based pricing

Rather than a fixed price for a product, risk-based pricing is a scale.

Credit unions can differentiate between high-risk and low-risk borrowers, allowing you to charge interest rates that better reflect individual applicant risk. Aligning loan pricing with risk ensures lenders are not undercharging for high-risk loans. Offering lower rates to low-risk applicants can attract a more creditworthy borrowers, leading to fewer defaults and increased income

Affordability rules

New Affordability rules based on Open Banking data will make it easier to refer and decline applications based on current account information. These include:

• Validating income
• Income stability
• Bounced payments
• Gambling
• Buy Now Pay Later

Although Open Banking only decisions can be made, these are even more powerful when combined with the credit data. If you do not use NestEgg for Open Banking and want to find out more about how we’re moving towards Open Finance for credit assessment – let us know.

Secondary credit bureau

NestEgg has started work on integrating a second credit bureau check. When there’s no match at the primary bureau or a ‘thin’ credit file is returned, a call to a second credit bureau can be made automatically. There’ll also be the ability to run a second credit bureau check for larger value loans.

And finally … the next steps following the FCA Financial Inclusion Techsprint.

Following NestEgg’s win at the FCA Techsprint, we’ve been busy talking to a wide range of stakeholders about how we maximise referrals to the Broker platform. As soon as we’re able to, we’ll share news but there are some positive updates on the way.

Find out more

A new dashboard will be rolled out in late summer. NestEgg is making significant progress trialing Machine Learning to improve decision outcomes. Advanced Analytics will help lenders better understand their loan portfolio and we’re making progress in our ability to share lending data between credit unions.