Heartland implements new technologies to meet CCCFA obligations

For certain lending products, Heartland will now adopt bank statement retrieval technology as a digital way to verify a customer’s income and expenses. This exciting tool makes it easier for customers to securely submit their bank statements to us online – it also means Heartland’s team can do the verification digitally, rather than manually checking each transaction.

How bank statement retrieval works

Here’s a breakdown of how a customer applying for a loan through Heartland might use bank statement retrieval.

1.  The customer is either sent or directed to our unique bank statement retrieval link.

2.  Clicking on the link takes them to a secure portal where they provide their own internet banking login details, which displays a list of all their bank statements from that provider. This secure portal uses the same level of encryption that banks do and receives regular security audits.

3.  The customer chooses which statements they’d like to share with Heartland. If they have accounts with more than one bank, they can add another banking provider by following the prompts.

4.  Once all the statements have been retrieved, the customer logs out and closes the session. Login details are not stored.

5.  The statements are then sent securely to Heartland, where the transactions are automatically categorised for faster and easier assessment.

Heartland has partnered up with illion, an award-winning, government-recognised credit reporting company, to provide this solution to our customers. Have a look at our bank statement retrieval page to learn more about the technology.

What prompted this change?

On 1 December 2021, changes were made to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), meaning lenders offering CCCFA-governed credit (home loans, personal loans, car loans, overdrafts) must inquire further into the affordability and suitability of loans for their customers in order to protect them from taking on unaffordable debt.

As part of these new requirements, all lenders in New Zealand must now assess and verify a customer’s last 90 days of bank statements during the application process. Without an automated solution, this process would be manual. Bank statement retrieval technology not only helps us meet our obligations, but also makes our application process more efficient than the manual option.

Heartland is excited about this new technology and how it will improve our application process as we continue on our digitalisation journey.