Open banking already touches sixteen million bank accounts in the UK

If you've applied for a mortgage recently, or even just looked into it, you've probably been asked to connect your bank account instead of uploading PDF statements. That is open banking, and by the end of 2025 more than sixteen million people in the UK were using it. The short answer to whether it's safe is yes, provided the provider is registered and regulated; the longer answer is that it's one of the more genuinely useful pieces of financial technology to reach the mortgage market in years.

The basics

Open banking is a government-backed system that lets you securely share your financial data with regulated providers, introduced under EU rules the UK kept after Brexit and enforced by the Financial Conduct Authority. Every major UK bank is legally required to support it.

Why it matters for a mortgage

The traditional mortgage process relies almost entirely on documents you have to find, print, scan and explain; three to six months of statements, checked by hand, for a snapshot that is already out of date by the time an underwriter sees it. Open banking allows lenders to replace the snapshot with a live, verified picture of your income and spending, with your consent.

What lenders are actually doing with it

This is not theoretical. A growing number of UK lenders, brokers and building societies now use open banking as a standard part of mortgage assessment, not a pilot; some have cut bank statement retrieval from days to minutes, and decision-in-principle turnaround from hours to seconds for eligible cases. The high-street banks are moving more cautiously, as large institutions tend to; brokers, though, are increasingly building open banking into how they package a case before it even reaches a lender.

What it actually does for you

Three things, in practice. It gets you a faster answer, because a lender is reading verified data instead of waiting for someone to check documents by hand. It gives a fairer picture of your finances, since a consistent saver with steady income looks like exactly that, rather than a set of numbers on a payslip. And it cuts the paperwork; no scanning statements, no chasing an employer for a letter, once you've given consent.

Why lenders trust it more than a stack of PDFs

A PDF bank statement is easy to edit, easy to crop and easy to submit selectively; a lender reviewing one manually has no way to verify it came straight from the bank unaltered. Open banking removes that uncertainty entirely, because the data arrives directly from the bank's own systems through a regulated connection, with no document changing hands in between. That is a meaningful difference for a lender's own risk process, not just a convenience for the customer.

A categorised, source-verified transaction feed is harder to dispute and quicker to act on than a scanned statement that still needs a human to read, interpret and cross-check against a payslip.

What this actually looks like for two customers

A customer with a straightforward salaried job and one bank account might see their entire affordability picture verified in the time it takes to make a coffee; income lands on the same date each month, outgoings are stable, and there is little for a lender to query. A customer with income split across two jobs or a side business sees a different benefit: open banking can piece together a fuller picture from multiple accounts, rather than forcing the lender to average a messier set of payslips into a single, often understated figure.

What Moxim does with this

Moxim's affordability check does exactly this: connect your bank account, and in a few minutes you get a real picture of what you could borrow, based on your actual finances rather than a rough multiple of your salary.

Open banking will not get you a mortgage you can't afford. What it does is make sure a lender is judging you on the finances you actually have, not the ones a stack of paperwork happens to show.

How a lender's decision actually changes

The most visible change is speed, but it is not the only one. A lender reading a stack of PDF statements has to make judgement calls: is this transfer a one-off, or a pattern? Does this account cover rent, or is that paid from somewhere else? Open banking removes much of that guesswork by categorising the data automatically, so a lender sees income, committed spending and discretionary spending as distinct categories rather than a wall of unlabelled line items.

That matters most for a customer whose finances do not fit neatly onto one page. A customer juggling rent, a car finance payment and a side income from freelance work used to rely on a human underwriter correctly interpreting all of it from three months of statements; open banking gives the same underwriter a structured, pre-categorised version of the same information, which is both faster to review and less prone to a reviewer missing something in a long PDF.

Why sixteen million people already trust it

Adoption did not happen because banks pushed it; it happened because the alternative, posting statements or uploading scans, was slower and more frustrating for everyone involved. Once a customer has connected an account once, doing it again for a different lender or a mortgage readiness check takes the same 60 seconds; there is no new form to fill in and no new document to find.

The scale of adoption also means most customers now expect to be asked. A lender or broker still relying purely on manual statement review is increasingly the exception, not the default, and that gap is one worth asking about directly if a broker cannot say whether their process uses it.

None of this changes what a lender ultimately decides; it changes how quickly and how clearly a lender can see the real financial picture sitting behind that decision.

Ready to see your real borrowing power? Check my affordability →

Frequently asked questions

Does open banking work if I'm applying for a mortgage jointly?

Yes; each applicant connects their own accounts, and a lender builds a combined affordability picture from both, in the same way it would from two sets of manual statements, just faster and with less back and forth.

What if I don't want to share my bank data at all?

That is always an option. Choosing not to connect an account simply means falling back to the traditional route of submitting statements manually; it will not count against you, though the process is likely to take longer.

Is my data sold to anyone once I connect my bank account?

No. A regulated open banking provider uses your data only for the purpose you consented to, such as an affordability check; it is not a data source for advertising or resale, and providers are bound by the same data protection law as any other regulated financial service.

Does open banking replace the need for a mortgage broker?

No. It changes what a broker has to chase, not what they do; a broker still advises on which lenders and products fit your situation, but spends less time gathering documents and more time on that advice.

Can open banking data be used against me, for example if I overspend one month?

A single unusual month rarely sinks an application on its own. Lenders and tools that use open banking properly look at patterns over several months, not a single snapshot, so one atypical week of spending is read in context rather than in isolation.

How is this different from just emailing a PDF bank statement?

A PDF is a static, unverified document that a person has to read and interpret by hand. Open banking delivers the same underlying information as structured, source-verified data that software can categorise automatically, which is both faster and less prone to human error or selective editing.

Does open banking cost me anything to use?

No, connecting your account through open banking carries no fee to you; any cost sits between the lender or provider and their technology partner, not the customer.

What's the difference between open banking and a credit reference agency?

A credit reference agency holds a record of how you have borrowed and repaid in the past. Open banking shows what is happening in your accounts right now. Lenders increasingly use both together, since each answers a different question about the same applicant.

Is open banking legally required in the UK?

The major UK banks are required to support open banking technology under rules that followed the second Payment Services Directive, and the Financial Conduct Authority oversees how regulated providers use the data; using it as a customer, however, is always your choice, never a legal requirement placed on you.

Can I connect a joint account if only one of us is applying?

Yes; a joint account can be connected by either named holder, and the lender will see the same shared transaction history either of you would see logging in directly, alongside whatever individual accounts each applicant chooses to add.

Is open banking the same as online banking?

No. Online banking is how you log in and manage your own account. Open banking is a separate, regulated system that lets you share your transaction data securely with a third party you have chosen, without ever sharing your banking password.

Which UK banks support open banking?

Every major UK bank and building society is legally required to support open banking, so coverage is close to universal. A handful of smaller or newer providers may not yet be listed with every open banking tool.

Do I have to use open banking to get a mortgage?

No. Most lenders still accept manual bank statements as an alternative. Open banking tends to produce a faster decision and fewer document requests, but it is a choice, not a requirement.

How far back does open banking look at my transactions?

Typically three to twelve months, depending on the lender or tool. You can see exactly what is being requested before you agree to share it.

Can a lender see every account I have?

Only the accounts you specifically choose to connect. Open banking does not give a lender automatic visibility into accounts you have not consented to share.

Does checking my affordability through open banking affect my credit score?

No. It works alongside, not instead of, a credit check, and viewing your own data this way leaves no mark on your file.

What happens to my data after the mortgage process is finished?

You can revoke access at any time, either through your bank's app or by asking the provider directly to delete your data under GDPR.

Is open banking only useful for people with simple finances?

The opposite is usually true. It tends to help most where finances are not simple: variable income, multiple accounts or a thin credit history, where a single payslip or credit score tells a lender the least.