In association with
Live Panel Debate - 18 September 2025, 10:00 BST
A virtual event
The aggregator advantage: Combining data to power automated lending decisions
Lenders today are under growing pressure to deliver fast, accurate, and responsible credit decisions – especially when customers apply through aggregators and price comparison sites.
While many lenders have started to incorporate Open Banking data into their decision-making processes, far fewer are fully automating these decisions and most still rely on manual reviews – increasing operational costs, slowing down approvals, and potentially missing out on customers.
In this webinar, we’ll explore how lenders can combine traditional bureau data with Open Banking insights to automate more lending decisions, boost pre-approvals, and lend with confidence – even to thin-file applicants. Our expert panel will unpack common barriers to automation, from integration and data complexity to regulatory concerns, and reveal how a smarter, joined-up approach can drive better outcomes for lenders and borrowers alike.
We’ll explore how to:
- Overcome reliance on manual underwriting to reduce friction and cost
- Confidently automate lending decisions by combining bureau and Open Banking data
- Increase the number of pre-approved customers on aggregator platforms
- Better serve thin-file applicants with richer insight into affordability and spending behaviour
- Navigate regulatory expectations while improving speed and accuracy of decisioning
Join us to discover how leading lenders are creating a competitive edge through smarter, faster, and fairer lending – powered by intelligent data aggregation.
Speakers include
Ellie Duncan
Ellie Duncan
Head of Content Open Banking ExpoFormer Financial Times Group journalist Ellie Duncan has a decade of experience across financial services. While arguably best-known for her asset management work, she has also covered open banking, credit, private equity and entrepreneurship.
Karl-Magnus Wadsack
Karl-Magnus Wadsack
Strategic Growth Director (Open Banking) EquifaxKarl-Magnus has over 25 years’ experience in the industry, providing client solutions and product development for a wide range of financial services clients.
Karl-Magnus played a lead role in implementing the partnership strategy, working alongside specialist FinTechs to ensure that Equifax can offer innovative and fast-paced solutions for our clients. Karl-Magnus is now responsible for driving the client success strategy and providing a focus on maximising the benefits that our new and existing Open Banking solutions can deliver to clients and their customers alike.
Gerald Chappell
Gerald Chappell
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer AboundGerald Chappell co-founded Abound and Render to expand access to affordable credit.
Abound is a consumer lender that uses Open Banking to truly understand each applicant – what they earn, how they spend, and what’s left at the end – rather than relying on credit scores and statistical averages. This is made possible by their in-house credit decisioning platform Render. Thanks to Render, defaults on Abound’s loans are 70% lower than market expectations, and over 60% of Abound’s customers would not have been approved had they been assessed by traditional methods. Lenders across Europe are now able to use Render to incorporate Open Banking into their credit decisioning.
Prior to Abound and Render, Gerald was a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he was Global Head of Digital Lending, and Global Head of Credit Analytics.
