Industries / Higher Education
Open Banking and Affordability Assessment for University Student Funding Teams
We help student funding teams move from manual bank statement review to a faster, fairer, evidenced process. So you can spend less time on data preparation and more time on the students who need your support.
The Reality of Manual Hardship Assessment
Student funding teams are small, mission-driven, and under increasing pressure. Most of the assessment day is spent on data, not on decisions.
Hours Spent on Manual Review
PDF bank statements, screenshots, and spreadsheets consume most of your assessment capacity. Cross-referencing transactions line by line leaves little time for the conversations that matter.
Hard to Evidence Decisions
When an unsuccessful applicant challenges an outcome, reconstructing how the decision was reached is difficult. Different team members apply different approaches, and consistency is hard to demonstrate.
Pressure to Reach More Students
Finance asks for efficiency. Student services asks you to reach the students who genuinely need help. With small teams and rising application volumes, both feel out of reach.
We understand that hardship assessments aren't just administrative tasks. They're the moments where you decide whether a student can stay in education.
How It Works
Four steps, from invite to evidenced decision. No PDFs, no screenshots, no manual cross-referencing.
Send a branded invite
Invitations arrive from your own university email address. We set up the DNS so the student sees a familiar sender, not a third-party tool.
Student consents in minutes
The student authorises access through their own mobile banking app. Most consents take two to three minutes and use the same authentication their bank already trusts.
Transaction data flows in
Up to twelve months of categorised transaction history is pulled in across every bank the student has consented to. No PDFs, no manual data entry.
Your team reviews a clear summary
Income, affordability, and risk indicators are surfaced on one screen. Your team focuses on the decision, not the data preparation.
What your team sees before reviewing. Twelve months of account-balance trend, with the categorised transactions underneath.
| 15 May 2026 | THE HUB CARDIFF MET | Campus | Card Payment | −£4.20 | £1,102.76 |
| 14 May 2026 | TESCO EXPRESS CARDIFF | Supermarket | Card Payment | −£18.45 | £1,106.96 |
| 14 May 2026 | CARDIFF MET CATERING | Campus | Card Payment | −£6.75 | £1,125.41 |
| 13 May 2026 | UBER TRIP | Public transport | Card Payment | −£9.40 | £1,132.16 |
| 12 May 2026 | PRET A MANGER CARDIFF | Eating out | Card Payment | −£7.50 | £1,141.56 |
| 11 May 2026 | TO H JONES | Transfer payments | Faster Payment | −£25.00 | £1,149.06 |
| 10 May 2026 | SU FOOD COURT | Campus | Card Payment | −£8.20 | £1,174.06 |
| 10 May 2026 | CASH WITHDRAWAL | Cash | ATM | −£40.00 | £1,182.26 |
| 09 May 2026 | LIDL GB CARDIFF | Supermarket | Card Payment | −£26.85 | £1,222.26 |
| 07 May 2026 | SPOTIFY UK | Subscriptions | Direct Debit | −£5.99 | £1,249.11 |
| 06 May 2026 | MET COFFEE CYNCOED | Campus | Card Payment | −£3.50 | £1,255.10 |
| 04 May 2026 | NANDOS CARDIFF | Eating out | Card Payment | −£16.40 | £1,258.60 |
| 03 May 2026 | CARDIFF MET HALLS | Campus | Standing Order | −£540.00 | £1,275.00 |
| 01 May 2026 | CARDIFF MET HARDSHIP | Campus | BACS Credit | +£250.00 | £1,815.00 |
| 30 Apr 2026 | STUDENT LOANS CO | Student finance | BACS Credit | +£1,540.00 | £1,565.00 |
What's Included
Every feature is available to every university client. There are no tiers, no add-on modules, and no upsells.
Built for Funding Teams
Income Verification
Employment, benefits, family support, and student finance, identified across every consented account.
Affordability View
Visual account-balance trends so you can see what twelve months actually looked like for the student.
Risk Indicators
Gambling, buy now pay later, loan repayments, cash withdrawals, overdraft use, outbound transfers, returned direct debits, and income drops, all surfaced clearly.
Student Financial Summary
A branded document with first meeting and review meeting modes. Side-by-side charts show how a student's position has changed since the initial assessment.
The Student Financial Summary
A structured workflow inside the platform that turns consented open banking data into a focused, plain-English document tailored to a single student conversation. The PDF is the output. The thinking and the conversation around it are where the value sits.
What it is
- A guided workflow built around a typical 40-minute consultation, not a one-off PDF export.
- The output is a branded document the adviser can share with the student during or after the meeting.
- Fully branded per university. Cardiff Metropolitan University's version uses the university's colour palette, logo, and bilingual English and Welsh headers throughout (for example, “Student Financial Summary / Crynodeb Ariannol Myfyrwyr”).
How an adviser uses it
Choose the meeting type
First meeting for an initial assessment, or review meeting for a follow-up or top-up.
Confirm the dates
When financial support began, the date of the initial assessment, and today’s date.
Pick up to five focus categories
Out of twelve. Everything else is grouped into “Everything Else” so the conversation stays focused.
Review the discussion points
The platform generates suggested talking points and recommendations based on the categories chosen.
Add notes and generate
The adviser adds their own observations and agreed actions before producing the final document.
Comparing first and review meetings
When an adviser runs a review meeting, typically three months after the first or when a student applies for a top-up, the document becomes a true comparison. Two periods are analysed side by side: the baseline before intervention and the current period since the first meeting. Twin spending charts and category-level changes (for example, “spending in this category has reduced by 18%”) help evidence whether the support is working.
A complete financial picture
A single student can consent to multiple banks in one application. The platform aggregates current accounts, savings accounts, and credit cards automatically, then lets the adviser switch between the combined view and a per-bank breakdown. A student with savings is in a different position to one without, and the document reflects that.
Keeping the data fresh
Open banking consents last 90 days under UK regulation. Within that window, the adviser can refresh the data with one click before a meeting. After 90 days, the platform can send a branded re-consent invite from the university's email address, re-using the same bank authentication. No paperwork, no new application.
Built with Universities
The higher education product is shaped by our university partners. Every feature we build for one university is released to all of them at no extra charge.
The Student Financial Summary
A branded document the team could share with students in face-to-face conversations. We built it, and it is now available to every university client.
A Campus category for the spending students do on site
A meal deal at the SU shop. A coffee on the way to a lecture. A snack between seminars. Individually small, but repeated across a term they quietly become one of the biggest spend categories for many students living on or near campus.
Cardiff Met asked us to surface this spending in its own right, rather than letting it disappear into general “convenience store” or “eating out” totals. The categorisation engine now recognises on-campus retailers as a dedicated Campus category. The same approach extends to other university-administered transactions, so accommodation paid directly to the university, fees, and awards like the hardship fund itself can sit alongside the on-campus retail spend in a single coherent picture.
When an adviser focuses on Campus in a meeting, the Student Financial Summary auto-generates a non-judgemental talking point. For example, suggesting a single weekly supermarket shop as a small change with visible impact by the next review.
Built for Cardiff Met. Available to every university on the platform.
On the Roadmap
We try to be honest about what the platform does today and what we're still building. Here's what's actively in development.
A clearer essential and non-essential split
A breakdown of essential versus non-essential spending, shaped by feedback from our university partners.
Configurable risk thresholds
Tunable per institution, so each university can set the indicators and limits that match its own assessment policy.
Improved transfer filtering
Better detection of transfers between a student’s own accounts, so genuine income is easier to spot.
Continued categorisation improvements
Ongoing refinement of how transactions are grouped, informed by the corrections our university partners feed back.
Transparent Pricing
No tiers, no setup hidden in the small print, no minimum commitment.
Platform fee
£75
per month, ex VAT
Per bank consent
£1
per consented bank, ex VAT
Implementation
£750
one-off, ex VAT
A worked example
For a university running around 600 hardship applications a year, with most students consenting more than one bank account, the annual cost works out at approximately:
One-off implementation of £750 ex VAT (£900 inc VAT) is invoiced separately at the start.
Security and Procurement
Built to meet the requirements of university procurement, information governance, and IT services colleagues.
We're happy to talk directly with procurement, information governance, and IT services alongside the funding team. We've been through this process before and we know what you need from us.
Cardiff Metropolitan University
Our first university client, and the team who shaped the higher education product.
Shaping the higher education product.
Cardiff Met approached us to adapt the open banking and affordability tools we had built for credit unions, so they could be used for student hardship assessments. The team wanted a faster, fairer way to review applications and an easier way to evidence decisions.
Today, the team uses Soar to review consented transaction data in place of manual PDF review. They use the Student Financial Summary for face-to-face conversations, and they can reassess students mid-year when circumstances change. The platform sits alongside their existing student records system.
The Cardiff Met document is fully branded in the university's navy, maroon, and yellow palette, with bilingual English and Welsh headers throughout (for example, “Student Financial Summary / Crynodeb Ariannol Myfyrwyr”). The brand system is extensible to other universities.
Questions Universities Ask
If something here isn't covered, we'd be glad to talk it through.
How long does implementation take?
Typically two to four weeks. The one-off implementation covers branding, onboarding, training, and the DNS setup with your IT services team.
Does this replace our student records system?
No. Soar sits alongside Oracle PeopleSoft, Tribal SITS, or whatever system you already use. We focus on the open banking and affordability assessment piece, not on replacing your student record.
What about international students who bank outside the UK?
Open banking is a UK regulatory framework, so direct bank connections are UK-only. Revolut multi-currency accounts are supported, which covers a meaningful share of international students.
Can we configure risk thresholds to suit our assessment approach?
Configurable risk thresholds are on the roadmap. At present, the platform surfaces the same set of indicators for every institution, and we are happy to talk through what each one means.
How does the affordability calculation work?
The current affordability view follows the Standard Financial Statement framework. A clearer split between essential and non-essential spending is in development, shaped by feedback from our university partners.
Is there a minimum commitment?
No. There is no minimum term and no minimum monthly spend.
Can we cancel?
Yes. There is no minimum term, so you can stop using the platform whenever it stops being useful to you.
What happens to student data after 90 days?
Open banking consent expires after 90 days, after which fresh data is no longer fetched. Data already pulled is retained per our privacy policy, and students can revoke consent at any time during the 90-day window.
What happens if a student applies for additional support later in the year?
The Student Financial Summary has a review meeting mode that compares the student’s current position against their original assessment. Twin spending charts and category-level changes show whether the situation has improved or deteriorated since the first meeting. If the original open banking consent is still within its 90-day window, the adviser can refresh the data with one click. If the window has expired, the platform can send a branded re-consent invite from the university’s email address, re-using the same trusted bank authentication.
Can a student connect more than one bank?
Yes. A student can consent to multiple banks in a single application, and the platform aggregates the accounts automatically. Current accounts, savings accounts, and credit cards are all distinguished and shown together. Advisers can switch between the combined view and a per-bank breakdown.
ISO 27001:2022 certified. UK AWS hosting. Student data stays in the UK.
See It with Your Own Data
We'll walk your team through the platform, show you the consent journey from the student's perspective, and answer whatever your procurement and IT colleagues need to know. No pressure, no follow-up sales calls.
Happy to speak with procurement, information governance, and IT services alongside the funding team.