Open Finance and collections: the data that no one is using yet

Brazil's Open Finance is one of the most ambitious financial infrastructure projects underway in the world. Since 2022, any individual or legal entity can authorize the sharing of their financial data between institutions via a standardized API regulated by BACEN.

The most common use case so far has been credit origination: banks querying a client's checking account data at other banks to calculate a credit score with more information. It makes sense. It is the most obvious use case.

The use case almost no one is pursuing: querying Open Finance data before a collection action. And the potential impact here is greater than in origination.

What Open Finance allows you to query

With the account holder's consent (which can be obtained as part of the negotiation flow), it is possible to access:

• 01
  Recent bank balance and transaction history

  A debtor who says "I have no money" but has R$3,000 in their checking account is in a different situation than someone who truly has no liquidity. The data changes the approach.
• 02
  Income and revenue sources

  A salaried debtor with regular payroll deposits has a different payment profile than a freelancer with irregular income. The appropriate installment plan for each is different.
• 03
  Other active debts

  A debtor with multiple debts in simultaneous collection is in a state of technical insolvency. In these cases, forcing immediate payment may result in default with another creditor, creating a dispute over available funds.
• 04
  Recent Pix transaction history

  This is the most undervalued signal. A debtor who made 15 Pix transactions in the last week, including paying other bills, clearly has access to the system and is likely prioritizing other debts. The data changes the tone and urgency of the approach.

The signal no one is using: Pix as a liquidity indicator

This deserves a separate highlight because it is simple and overlooked.

Pix leaves a trail. Not of amounts or recipients, but of frequency of use. A debtor who uses Pix daily is active in the financial system. A debtor who has not made a single Pix transaction in 30 days is possibly experiencing temporary exclusion from the system (unemployment, illness, bank change).

These two profiles need completely different approaches. The first needs urgency and convenience. The second needs empathy and flexibility.

How to implement in practice

The Open Finance consent flow can be integrated into the collection process itself. When the debtor responds to the agent's first message, the system can request consent, with clear and pressure-free language, to query financial data as part of "finding the best negotiation terms."

Debtors who grant consent have an interest in resolving the debt. The conversion rate for this group is historically high. And the data obtained allows the agent to make a surgical offer: not a standard discount, but a proposal calibrated to the debtor's actual liquidity.

The complete flow:

Why almost no one uses it yet

Three reasons: technical complexity of implementation (the Open Finance APIs have authentication and consent peculiarities), legal uncertainty about the lawful basis for use in collections (this is resolved: it is legitimate interest, per LGPD), and simply a lack of experimentation.

Open Finance for collections is still a frontier. The data exists, the infrastructure exists, the legal basis exists. What is missing is a product that connects the dots. The competitive advantage window for whoever connects them first is real.