Breaking new ground in banking

Great news for you and your clients who bank with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland or Ulster Bank NI: these clients will soon no longer need to leave FreeAgent to re-consent their bank feed every 90 days. Instead, they - and you - can do this at the click of a button, without leaving FreeAgent.

An industry first

FreeAgent is the first accounting software to offer this functionality, and we’re delighted to offer you and your clients this industry-first exclusive using cutting-edge Open Banking technology.

This update won’t only save your clients time re-consenting their bank feeds every 90 days, but we also hope it will save you time chasing them up on this important part of their FreeAgent banking admin. You’re probably already aware that bank feeds are huge time savers for both accountants and their clients, securely importing transactions daily and doing away with manual CSV statement uploads.

The icing on the cake is, you will actually be able to re-consent your clients' bank feeds for them by securely switching to their account and clicking the same ‘Update connection’ button that’s available to them. Again, you won’t need to leave FreeAgent to do this - it’s just a click of a button.

When will this change come into effect?

Now that this functionality is live for users who bank with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank NI, the next time a client re-consents or sets up a new bank feed (by logging in to their bank) we will ask their bank for a ‘long-lived’ consent. Once we have this long-lived consent in place, the user or their accountant can refresh within FreeAgent.

This means that although the functionality is now live, your client will need to re-consent their feed once more in the 90 days after 5th April 2022 to authorise long-lived consent. Thereafter you will be able to complete re-consent on their behalf. Look out for the new re-consent process appearing in your clients’ accounts from late June 2022 onwards.

What’s next?

We’re planning to roll out this process to other banks in future.