Atto

Atto, which formally operated as DirectID and The ID Co., is a financial technology firm specializing in credit risk decisioning through open banking data. The company was established in 2011 by James Varga with the objective of streamlining customer onboarding and providing businesses with deeper financial insights into their clientele. A key milestone for the company was creating the first-ever Account Information Service Provider (AISP) integration, marking it as an early participant in the open banking movement. In March 2024, the company rebranded from DirectID to Atto, a move designed to highlight its strategic pivot towards predictive credit scoring models.

The firm's core business revolves around its global credit and risk platform, which uses real-time, consumer-permissioned bank transaction data to generate predictive models and financial insights for lenders. This service caters to businesses in sectors such as banking, automotive finance, and B2B/B2C lending, helping them with affordability assessments, income verification, and fraud reduction throughout the entire credit lifecycle, from onboarding to collections. Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an AISP, Atto facilitates the secure sharing of up to 12 months of read-only transaction data between a consumer and a business, with explicit user consent. Revenue is generated by providing these data-driven services to businesses to enhance their credit risk management.

Atto's platform provides an alternative to traditional credit assessment methods by analyzing real-time spending, saving, and earning behaviors. Its services include a transaction categorization engine, income verification, bank account verification, and affordability assessments. By leveraging an API with over 13,000 bank connections across more than 80 countries, the platform offers lenders a more precise and current view of a customer's financial health. This approach enables quicker, more informed lending decisions and helps to make credit more accessible for individuals who may be underserved by conventional scoring systems. In a significant partnership, Atto collaborated with FICO in April 2024 to develop a transaction-based score that integrates open banking data directly into the credit scoring process for UK lenders.

Keywords: open banking, credit risk, financial data, predictive modeling, AISP, income verification, affordability assessment, fintech, transaction data, risk management, credit scoring, bank data API, financial insights, customer onboarding, fraud reduction, lending technology, The ID Co., James Varga, real-time data, data analytics