Last week Aviva announced their partnership with fintech Bud to offer Open Banking access to its workplace pension clients through a new money management dashboard through Aviva’s MyWorkplace.

This new service means that the dashboard makes it easy for members to see all their connected bank accounts in one place and they can assess trends in their spending and income, as well as identify opportunities to save for the future through a series of smart notifications.

We have benchmarked Aviva in our 2022 Open Finance ratings and they have scored a full house of Gold awards for all three of their propositions (Designer, My Money and My Money Master Trust).

The ratings look in detail at six core components of an open banking proposition and we have benchmarked providers on their product offering and functionality. In this insight we take a closer look at the new functionality offered by Aviva.

Transaction history & categorisation:

When an account has been linked to Aviva, on average, 12 months of transaction history will be made available. The transaction history is captured automatically and Aviva will categorise each transaction accordingly (Aviva supports market leading exhaustive primary and secondary categories, but the user cannot add their own as yet).

If a transaction from a specific merchant is manually re-categorised, Aviva will update and re-categorise all previous transactions from that merchant and the model will “learn” from the action going forward.

Users are able to carry out a search by category, over specific date ranges and show an aggregated total spend.

Messaging & outcomes:

Aviva will use data from open finance to help drive better personalised financial outcomes for their members.

This includes intelligent messaging or nudges for spending, saving and debt management. Messages are delivered to the member as push notifications via the app and portal or secure messaging.

Account connectivity:

Using Open Finance technology workplace scheme members can connect their current accounts, savings accounts and credit cards.

There is no additional cost for this service to the member or employer.

Bank connectivity:

Aviva can use Open Finance to retrieve account data from 14 of the 18 the high street and challenger banks we have in our analysis. This also includes American Express.

Aviva can also support connections to bank accounts from New Zealand and Australia.

Including partner & joint accounts:

Aviva allows users to connect their own banking, savings and credit card accounts, and those in a joint name or a partners account where supported.

Consent:

Aviva will automatically notify the user to renew their Open Banking consent every 90 days via push notifications, and will follow up with reminders if not actioned accordingly.

If the consent is not renewed after 90 days the account will be deactivated and all transaction history is deleted.

Suzanne Rose, head of proposition at Aviva, said;

“We are thrilled to get a Gold rating from Benefits Guru for our Workplace Savings and Retirement proposition. The launch of our partnership with Bud Financial to provide an Open Banking solution is an exciting addition to our digital proposition to better support our clients and advisers and help members to achieve the best possible retirement. It’s fantastic to see this recognised by Benefits Guru through its prestigious ratings.

“The current challenging economic environment means the ability to track spending and receive support with insights through an open banking solution becomes even more valuable. We believe better customer engagement with pensions, and financial education, can be built through digital technology and will ultimately lead to better retirement choices.”

Click here to see the full 2022 Open Finance ratings.