Experian API Enables Faster OCBC Business Account Opening

Singapore bank OCBC is accelerating the bank account opening process for startups through a collaboration with Experian.

An announcement on Monday (Nov. 4) said Experian’s API will allow startups to open a business bank account with OCBC immediately following incorporation. The API integration allows the financial institution to use Experian to validate the startup’s business profile, the companies explained, with Experian relaying information about the company’s approval from Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) to OCBC via API.

The tie-up means startups will no longer have to wait one day to open a bank account following incorporation, the announcement noted.

“Banks play a key role in the startup and SME ecosystem, partly because the bank account is at the center of business operations,” said OCBC’s Head of Emerging Business and Commercial Banking Christie Chu in a statement. “Given this role and our standing as banker to more than one in two SMEs in Singapore, we are in the best position to strengthen the connections among all players in this ecosystem. That is what we have done here by streamlining the account opening and incorporation process so that startups can begin running their businesses as soon as possible.”

Earlier this year, OCBC spoke with Bloomberg to discuss another area of business banking, trade finance, and the role of trade finance fraud in promoting digitization in the market.

“Going paperless has to happen,” the bank’s Managing Director and Head of Global Commodities Finance Ng Chuey Peng told the publication in May, adding that fraudsters are generating false trade documents, with digitization able to help mitigate that risk.

Meanwhile, last week Experian announced a new solution to help lenders streamline the small business financing process via API. The company rolled out its Open Data lending solution, which automatically collects the required data and documentation and submits it to a lender for assessment.