Effi launches product search API

The solution will allow brokers to access product data on home loans provided by banks and lenders as required under the new Open Banking system. The new feature means brokers will be able to search a lending product and see key data points such as who is eligible for the product, what type of loan it is, and more.

The first phase of Open Banking launched in July 2020 with major banks providing data, and as of July 1 2021 remaining banks and financial institutions were required to share product data including Phase 3 products. The provided data is protected by the rules of the ACCC, but the ACCC has not been mandating the actual data entries and there are no enforceable regulations around the data to ensure it is up to date and correct.

To reportedly fill the gaps left by providers, Effi used business logic to fill out details and make the home loan product data available for over 100+ lenders via API in an easy-to-use format to anyone. What Effi initially found was:

• Out of 114 lenders and 6,612 lending products in total, 1,700 products did not have a defined purpose, which is a critical part of the data i.e. home loan type
• 4,882 products underwent at least one critical data point correction
• 7,539 overall corrections were made for Open Banking products