Fiinu (BANK), a fintech company and creator of the Plugin Overdraft®, has released an operational update today, charting a series of highlights from September 2022 through to January 2023. The company is currently half-way through the mobilisation year, and has provided some very promising operational highlights to date, demonstrating Fiinu is on course to exit from mobilisation in July 2023.
Over the course of the last five months, the company has made exceedingly good progress toward the commercial launch of its flagship product. Fiinu signed a series of contracts and made strides with system testing over this period, working to streamline the company’s critical systems, technology and procedures.
In September, Fiinu signed a contract with core banking platform Tuum, to power its Plugin Overdraft® - the company’s main product - a solution that gives consumers access to an overdraft facility without the need to switch banks and current accounts.
Building swiftly on this, Fiinu signed a contract with TransUnion in October to provide open banking and credit reference services, along with a contract signed with a decision engine services provider in the same month. In January, a contract was signed with services company, Maveric NXT, to provide additional strong industry experience and support for three months of assurance testing.
In December, Plugin Overdraft® began to further take shape with the development of the mobile application 'front end' completed as well as the majority of remaining microservices development completed. In the same month, the system integration test commenced, validating mobile application interaction with third party services via the delivered microservices.
Over the coming months, the remainder of the mobilisation period will involve a number of key further activities, including final systems integration testing, in-house user acceptance testing and a controlled release of applications to a limited customer base. Fiinu will provide further regular updates as the business plan progresses into 2023.
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With the cost of living squeeze persisting into 2023, Fiinu’s Plugin Overdraft® will provide flexibility to consumers in the tightly regulated overdraft market. Customers will have access to an overdraft facility on Plugin Overdraft® alongside their already existing bank account, without having to switch banks or current accounts.
Research conducted by Fiinu concludes that since 2019, banks have withdrawn overdraft facilities worth £10bn, leaving 16.5m former overdraft users without access to unarranged overdraft. As a result, consumers are increasingly forced to use alternatives that can damage their credit scores, with research further stating that the use of such alternatives can, on average, result in a 10% drop in credit scores.
This year, research from The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Strategic Review of Retail Banking Business Models revealed that the number of current accounts in the UK has increased by 15%, but only 45% of these accounts have access to an arranged overdraft. Fiinu’s product will address this gap by providing customers with the support they need during the current economic climate, and will no doubt be an appealing solution to many when the product is launched.