L&C Mortgages, Leeds Building Society pilot Open Banking to speed up mortgage process

Source: Leeds Building Society

A collaboration between Leeds Building Society and L&C Mortgages has enabled mortgage applications to progress more quickly and efficiently by using an automated process to access applicants’ recent financial history.

By connecting to Experian’s Open Banking platform, clients of L&C Mortgages have provided access to their financial records, showing regular income and outgoing payments, in place of gathering and submitting bank statements.

The process has now been adopted as routine procedure in applications between Leeds and L&C, freeing up time for brokers and clients. The learnings from this pilot are due to be rolled out to more of the Society’s intermediary partners.

James O’Reilly, head of intermediary partnerships at Leeds Building Society, said: “This pilot scheme has allowed us to reduce steps in the mortgage application and make life easier for brokers and their clients.

“Through our partnerships with L&C Mortgages and Experian, we have been able to demonstrate how new technology and close collaboration can deliver outcomes that will make meaningful differences to the mortgage journey.

“We are looking forward to taking the learnings from this pilot forward with more of our intermediary partners and expanding our use of automation.”

David Hollingworth, associate director at L&C Mortgages, said: “We’re delighted to have piloted this innovative, new approach from Leeds, which has enjoyed strong take up from our customers.

“The close collaboration between Leeds Building Society and our team has clearly demonstrated that the use of Open Banking can be integrated seamlessly into the standard process. The simple and straightforward approach reduces the amount of documentation required and ultimately speeds things up for both us and the customer.

“We’re always striving to remove pain points and blockers for clients and this kind of timesaving option is bound to be welcomed by a growing number of customers.”

Lucas Lopes, chief product officer, consumer information services & verifications, Experian UK&I, said: “As consumer demand for seamless digital experiences continues to rise, Open Banking is transforming mortgage applications—replacing manual, time-consuming processes with real-time data insights that deliver more tailored, transparent, and inclusive financial solutions.

“This pilot shows the tangible impact of industry collaboration, digital innovation, and enriched data in providing smarter, faster, and fairer decision-making. It’s encouraging to see meaningful progress, and we’re eager to build on these early results to bring even greater value to consumers.”

Further reading: UK government plans to enable data sharing in homebuying process