Version | Date | Author | Comments |
---|---|---|---|
2.0.0 | 24 Jul 2017 | Open Banking Open Data API Team | This is the baseline version. |
This specification includes all relevant artefacts for the Open Data Business SME Unsecured Loans (SME) API Specification.
Currently, price comparison websites have to obtain their SME Business Loan product data either via bank proprietary APIs, via information collected by dedicated data capture agencies or via "screen scraping" (i.e. capturing product web page information and writing scripts to extract relevant data). This work is complex and prone to error, so having a standard API would make the data capture side much easier and allow more third party providers to provide applications that could target particular consumer markets.
This endpoint can contain multiple brands owned by a particular banking group. Each brand can own multiple SME Unsecured Loan products.
This section covers SME Unsecured Loan attributes that will change only under rare circumstances (see CoreProduct section for additional attributes that will be updated regularly).
The following information can be provided:-
Within our design, we have a concept of a "marketing state" for the product. This concept is required because for any "On Sale" SME Unsecured Loan product:-
We'll illustrate this with the following example.
CMA9Bank has an SME Unsecured Loan product that was first advertised and marketed on 1/1/2017 and has the following features currently:-
The original marketing states can be shown as follows:-
Identification | PredecessorID | MarketingState | FirstMarketedDate | LastMarketedDate | StateTenureLength | StateTenurePeriod | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CP1 | Promotional | 1/1/2017 | 31/12/9999 | 9 | Month | On taking out the loan the initial promotional offer lasts 9 months. Attached to this state will be the original initial promotional interest rate information. | |
CP2 | CP1 | Promotional | 1/1/2017 | 31/12/9999 | 12 | Month | 9 months into the loan duration, the customer will receive a 2nd promotional offer lasting 12 months |
CR1 | CP2 | Regular | 1/1/2017 | 31/12/9999 | After the 2nd promotional period has expired, the accountholder will be moved to the regular interest rate. |
On 17th July, CMA9Bank are going to change the offer, so that only 0.3% is paid in the 1st 9 months. The marketing states on 16th July will look like this:-
Identification | PredecessorID | MarketingState | FirstMarketedDate | LastMarketedDate | StateTenureLength | StateTenurePeriod | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CP1 | Promotional | 1/1/2017 | 16/7/2017 | 9 | Month | On taking out the loan the initial promotional offer lasts 9 months. Attached to this state will be the original initial promotional interest rate information. | |
CP2 | CP1 | Promotional | 1/1/2017 | 31/12/9999 | 12 | Month | 9 months into the loan duration, the customer will receive a 2nd promotional offer lasting 12 months |
CR1 | CP2 | Regular | 1/1/2017 | 31/12/9999 | After the 2nd promotional period has expired, the accountholder will be moved to the regular interest rate. | ||
CP3 | Promotional | 17/7/2017 | 31/12/9999 | 9 | Month | On taking out the loan the initial promotional offer lasts 9 months. Attached to this, will be the revised initial promotional offer interest rate information. |
And on the 17th July, the marketing states will look like this:-
Identification | PredecessorID | MarketingState | FirstMarketedDate | LastMarketedDate | StateTenureLength | StateTenurePeriod | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CP2 | CP3 | Promotional | 1/1/2017 | 31/12/9999 | 12 | Month | 9 months after the account has been opened, the customer will receive a 2nd promotional offer lasting 12 months |
CR1 | CP2 | Regular | 1/1/2017 | 31/12/9999 | After the 2nd promotional period has expired, the accountholder will be moved to the regular interest rate. | ||
CP3 | Promotional | 17/7/2017 | 31/12/9999 | 9 | Month | On taking out the loan the initial promotional offer lasts 9 months. Attached to this, will be the revised initial promotional offer interest rate information. |
Notes:
This sections includes information that can change relatively often. Information to be provided includes:-
In this section, information about the interest rates that are payable by the SME to the Lender are listed. This section contains headline Representative APR info to be used on comparison websites.
Interest rates are typically standard variable rates, with rates potentially changing during the course of the product lifecycle. In addition to the 'Regular' standard variable rates, some Loan products also provide for more attractive 'Promotional' interest rates which are fixed for a relatively short duration. (see MarketingState section above as to how to represent these).
This section allows information to be provided about loan repayment and related fees/charges. Common fees and charges include:-
Early repayment charges
Overpayments with/without extra charges
Interest applicable
Loan setup/arrangement fee
Legal cost fee
Late Payment Fee
BorrowingItem (Return Fees)
In this section, criteria such as residency and trading history restrictions that are necessary for taking out an SME Unsecured Loan product are provided.
Note: eligibility criteria for features & benefits are treated in that section itself (see below).
In this section, information about any inherent product features or value-added benefits (whether they're charged or not) can be captured.
Benefits can also be grouped together e.g. if a package of benefits is supplied. For any benefits group, benefit details may be individually added or notes simply added to the benefits group.
For a benefits group or for individual benefits, any eligibility criteria required to obtain that benefit can be specified as notes.
Key Fees & Charges that a customer has to pay can be specified in the Core Product, Loan Repayment and Features & Benefits sections (see above).
The long tail of additional fees & charges that are not associated to either of these areas can be specified in this section.
The following UML Class Diagram provides the hierarchical structure of the message in a graphical form, which is easier to digest.