UK-based data intelligence platform Bud Financial (Bud) has partnered with Blackbullion to enhance the latter’s financial well-being solutions for higher education students. Through this collaboration, Blackbullion leverages Bud’s Assess and Engage solutions to offer students a more convenient process of applying for additional funding, including support funds, scholarships, and grants from their place of study and third-party organisations.

The partnership’s objective The collaboration also allows Blackbullion to integrate Bud’s financial insights into the financial literacy and well-being app developed to equip students with the money management skills they need to gain control over their financial lives. Currently partnering with 60 universities and colleges across the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, Blackbullion’s platform houses one of the UK’s largest hubs of support funds, scholarships, and grants for students. As some of Blackbullion’s partners use the Funds Management System (FMS) to manage an unlimited amount of support funds, students who apply through the company’s platform are often required to submit bank statement-related evidence.

This can be a time-consuming and laborious process, with students having to wait longer periods of time to receive funds. By using Bud’s Assess solution, Blackbullion provides students with the option to connect their bank account to their application so the evidence can be automatically integrated. In addition to supporting students, this also reduces the processing time for Blackbullion’s team. Moreover, the partnership with Bud also helps the company to increase efficiency in its personal finance app designed for students.

The Blackbullion app leverages Bud’s Open Banking and transactional AI solution to predict students’ potential finances based on their current trajectory. According to officials, the two companies aim to enable faster, easier, and more accurate funding application processes for students. By embedding Bud’s AI and data enrichment capabilities, Blackbullion’s app generates more accurate spending insights, supporting students in building financial literacy and resilience. Recent developments from Bud Financial With its transaction and data intelligence platform for the banking and financial services sector, Bud aims to enable global companies to simplify financial decisions by transforming transactional data into customer insights.

At the beginning of August 2023, the company launched Bud.ai, an AI core for its data intelligence platform that aims to enable financial institutions to use AI when engaging customers. Through this platform, financial services organisations can achieve a higher level of personalisation at scale in customer experience. Moreover, TotallyMoney partnered with Bud to allow customers to manage their finances with the support of AI. Through this collaboration, TotallyMoney can leverage Bud’s AI capabilities to use real-time Open Banking data to generate predictive insights, while offering its customers proactive bill and payment tracking. In June 2023, Bud also partnered with Fluro to improve its decision-making process through transaction AI and Open Banking data.

The partnership allowed Fluro to integrate Bud’s AI offerings and capabilities into its account connection, categorisation, and transaction analysis. .