The Bank Statement service, commonly referred to as IDX (Integrated Document Exchange), is the DEA’s primary service. It sees the secure transfer of Bank Statements from the clients transacting bank, to the Financial Services / Credit Provider where a client has applied for finance.
The Bank Statement service provides the requesting organisation with 6 months worth of an applicant’s bank statement data in PDF and HTML formats.
As with any onboarding process, explicit consent is required in order to comply with POPI and other regulations. As such, it is necessary to verify the identity of the applicant, thus ensuring that the owner of the account is the person providing consent.
As an add-on service only, the DEA offers Authenticated Consent which allows the applicant to undergo a facial biometric identity verification prior to the release of the Bank Statements.
Only once the applicants identity has been verified and consent provided, will the DEA release the request to the disclosing bank to obtain the bank statements.
The Document Exchange Asssociation (“DEA”) is a non-profit organisation, owned by the Member Banks, being Absa Bank, African Bank, Discovery Bank, Nedbank and Standard Bank.
The DEA transmits an applicants’ transactional banking data in a safe and encrypted format from their main transacting Member Bank (also known as their “Disclosing Bank”) upon request from a Member Bank or User (“Requester”) where the applicant (consumer) is applying for credit from a requester.
Only Banks are eligible to become Members of the Association. Banks and Closely Related Entities are however not eligible to become Users.
A Member Bank is a registered South African Bank as defined by the Banks Act who has chosen to join and participate on the DEA Platform by exchanging bank data with other Member Banks and Users.
The DEA exists to reduce the incidence of fraud and criminal behaviour in the Banking and Financial Services Industry by exchanging relevant bank transactional data in a safe, secure and reliable manner that allows a Member Bank and Credit Provider to extend loans to credit worthy applicants.
Member Banks and Users benefit by reducing the incidents of fraudulent attempts for obtaining loans where the applicant has no intention of repaying such a loan. Applicants benefit by not having to transmit their bank statements themselves which has the risk of being intercepted via email and / or being used to apply for loans without their knowledge which could compromise their good credit records and identities.
The DEA does not store any data and only transmits an applicants’ data in an encrypted manner that is unable to be hacked or tampered with. The applicants’ relevant financial records are transmitted from their Disclosing Bank to a Requester in a safe, reliable and encrypted manner and are not stored by the DEA at all. Only their own Disclosing Bank and Requesting Member Bank or User store their data as required by the relevant legislative laws governing the extension of credit.
The DEA works closely with the Member Banks and Users to ensure they obtain the applicant’s consent by ensuring their POPIA and relevant applicant consent process are compliant and adequate for this purpose. The DEA is able to investigate and curtail any deviations where applicants’ believe their identity details have been compromised in any way.