Frollo app gets a makeover with new features, further open banking integration

As the holiday season comes to an end and life shifts back to normal, many Australians will be looking at their finances with fresh eyes, ready to plan for the year ahead.

So in many ways, the release of the latest version of Sydney-based fintech Frollo’s budgeting app couldn’t have been better timed to appeal to any finance conscious Aussies looking for a digital solution to meet their money management needs.

Frollo allows its users to sync up a range of financial products including bank accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, loans, investments and superannuation to its app, giving users a picture of their entire financial life in the one place.

“Financial information is at the heart of how Frollo helps its users. By pulling in your transactions from different financial institutions, we can provide you a holistic overview of your finances, analyse and categorise them for you and provide you with insights and tips to improve your finances,” says Frollo’s Head of Marketing, Piet van den Boer.

And last week, Frollo further bolstered its app with a number of updated features for its 120,000 users. These include:

• Customisable budgets: The Frollo app now gives users more control over their budgets, including the option of setting up multiple budgets and changing the time frame on a budget to fit in with a users pay cycle.

• Searching and filtering: Users can now search for a keyword or a merchant using filters such as amount, date range, account or transaction category.

• Automatic goal tracking: Users also have the ability to set up a specific goal with a particular account and then have the Frollo app automatically track its progress.

According to Frollo, its budgeting app is not only providing users with a greater financial overview, but also helping them improve their financial positions.

The fintech states that, on average, users have been able to reduce their credit card debt by $460 within the first six months of using the app and increase their savings by $1,100 within the first three months.

Frollo continues Consumer Data Right integration

The final new feature rolled out by the fintech last week allows Android users to receive real-time transaction insights upon linking an eligible account in the Frollo app via Consumer Data Right (CDR) - a feature which has, until now, only been available to iOS users.

This is the latest in a series of steps Frollo has taken to roll out the benefits of open banking to its users after becoming an accredited CDR data recipient last July.

What is CDR? Simply put, it’s an open banking service regulated by the ACCC which allows Australians to share their financial data more easily, and safely, with third parties - for example, Frollo. At the moment only customers with the big four banks or Regional Australia Bank are able to share their data under CDR though.

Aside from being able to see transactions in real-time through the Frollo app, the other major benefit of CDR is that users won’t have to share their account information (through screen scraping) when syncing accounts with Frollo.

“Consumer Data Right provides for a safe and secure way to login to your own bank and tell them what data you'd like to share, with whom, and for how long. You're in control, and can always change or withdraw your consent, either in the Frollo app or with your bank,” says van den Boer.

According to Frollo, around 40% of its users who are with one of the big four banks have now linked at least one account via open banking.

And with the next phase of the CDR rollout set to commence with non-major banks from July 1, 2021, the adoption of the service by users of Frollo and other third parties is only likely to grow further.

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