It is a typical day at a small electronics shop in a busy market in Warangal, India. A loan officer sits across the counter, helping the shop owner apply for a working capital loan. Instead of asking for printed bank statements or requesting files to be shared over WhatsApp, the officer opens CredRight’s digital lending app and walks the customer through a short digital journey. On the screen, simple explainers describe what an account aggregator is and why using it can make the loan process more convenient for the applicant. A voice prompt asks the shop owner to confirm consent to share their financial data, pausing where needed and clarifying answers along the way. The shop owner understands what his banking data is being shared for, for how long, and for what purpose. Within a few minutes, the consent process is completed. There is no physical collection of bank statements, no follow-up for missing pages, and no incomplete documentation.
The applicant is visibly relieved. He does not have to shut his shop to visit his local bank or stand in long queues. He also feels reassured knowing exactly when and how CredRight will access his banking data — and, importantly, that he can revoke this permission if he chooses. The loan officer, meanwhile, knows that the bank statement received is authentic, structured, and ready for assessment, which means the customer is likely to receive his loan within a couple of days.
This is the seamless experience that Accion Advisory has been working toward with our partner, CredRight. They are not merely adopting the account aggregator as a data pipeline but embedding it meaningfully into how MSME credit is delivered on the ground.
Why do account aggregators matter for MSMEs?
Bank statements have always been central to credit assessments at financial institutions. They reveal real cash flows, business volatility, and repayment capacity in ways few other documents can. However, collecting and verifying these statements has historically been inefficient, manual, prone to fraud, and time-consuming for both customers and staff. This leads to frustration, which can push the borrower to opt for quicker, more unwarranted, and expensive credit alternatives.
The account aggregator framework fundamentally changes these dynamics. It allows MSMEs to share their financial data digitally and securely, with explicit consent. For lenders, this means faster, more reliable access to verified financial information and, importantly, better controls post-disbursement. Beyond a single loan application, an account aggregator offers MSMEs a long-term advantage. It enables them to access and share their financial data across different banks and across multiple data sources, such as the tax authority, insurance companies, and mutual funds. Instead of repeatedly submitting documents to different lenders, MSMEs can rely on a single, consent-driven mechanism to access their financial records more conveniently. This enables customers to seamlessly share their financial data with providers and access products tailored to their needs. With consent in place, borrowers have more agency, with visibility into who is accessing their data, for what purpose, and for how long, introducing a level of control that has largely been absent in traditional lending processes.
For lenders, the account aggregator shortens application timelines, enables standardized data intake, and reduces the risk of tampered or incomplete statements. It allows lenders to approve loans faster, monitor borrowers for signs of financial stress after disbursement, and improve portfolio quality by identifying risks early. It creates a foundation for using real-time financial data across the credit lifecycle. Realizing these benefits, however, requires lenders to rethink customer journeys, credit processes, and internal capabilities — not just system integration.
How CredRight leverages the account aggregator ecosystem
- Embedded in core loan processes: CredRight embedded the account aggregator journey into its loan application, making it mandatory for field staff to use it to collect bank statements. This ensures the financial data collected is consistent, verified, and standardized.
- Built institutional readiness: With Accion’s support, CredRight trained its field teams to confidently explain and facilitate the account aggregator journey, supported by structured training materials and customer-facing communication tools. Field staff are now equipped to explain the benefits and build trust with customers on how their financial data is being used.
- Strengthened adoption through measurement: Accion developed a key performance indicator dashboard to track uptake and performance of the account aggregator. The dashboard provides visibility into the Account Aggregator journey funnel, why data pulls failed, which banks experienced higher failure rates, and where drop-offs occurred during the credit process. It supported CredRight in selecting the most effective account aggregators, optimizing the timing of data pulls, and addressing failure points. These decisions resulted in increased success rates, with approximately 55 percent of loans being sourced through the account aggregator and about 10 percent higher sanction rates for these applications.
- Redesigned customer journeys for trust and usability: To build customer trust, Accion worked with CredRight to enhance UI/UX based on the desired account aggregator journey prototype built with contextual explainers, clear consent communication, and trust markers.
- Improved underwriting efficiency: To enable more efficient and structured cash flow assessments and to reduce manual effort in analyzing structured financial data, Accion and CredRight redesigned CredRight’s automated Bank Statement Analyzer. The Bank Statement Analyzer now captures critical variables that help the credit manager read signals in financial data, such as over-indebtedness, cash flow gaps, movement of money between accounts, hand loans, and other critical flags. It reflects on the effective utilization of bank statement data collected through an account aggregator.
- Enabled proactive portfolio monitoring: Customer consent for monitoring access of their bank statements post-disbursement enables financial institutions to monitor their loan portfolio for any early warning signals of financial stress. Accion helped CredRight design a system to collect and analyze key stress indicators, enabling the company to take appropriate action to support its borrowers to pay on time. Accion worked to build a composite score compiling the bank statement data collected through the account aggregator, the bureau data, and the collection history of the borrower.
What we are learning along the way
This venture has not been without challenges. Data pull failures remain high for certain banks, bank statement histories can be thin for some MSMEs, and customers have reported that an AA journey with technical jargon, accessible only in English, is intimidating. The consent, which is shared through OTP, is a paradox. At the same time, customer awareness continues to evolve. These are not issues unique to CredRight; they reflect the broader maturity of the account aggregator and banking ecosystem. Addressing them will require continued collaboration between lenders, banks, and technology service providers.
Looking ahead
CredRight’s experience underscores a simple insight: as MSME data footprints grow, the account aggregator will become increasingly central to the lending journey. But its success will depend on how well it serves the borrower and not just the lender.
To truly be effective, the account aggregator must work for MSMEs — supporting informed choices, meaningful consent, grievance redressal, and control over data sharing. By reducing friction, saving time, and building trust, it enhances outcomes for both MSMEs and lenders. Account aggregators are more than a compliance-driven regulatory framework; it is a transformative opportunity to reimagine financial services for underserved communities. By placing customers at the center, empowering them to control their own data, and equipping lenders with reliable, low-cost information, account aggregators have the potential to bridge long-standing gaps in India’s financial system. The lessons captured here are intended to accelerate adoption, encourage collaboration across stakeholders, and ensure that account aggregators’ promise translates into real improvements in the financial lives of millions of people.
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