That five of the nine banks won’t be fully ready for the initial compliance deadline is disappointing but not entirely surprising as the Jan. 13 date was always viewed as a ‘rolling start’ to open banking.
The six-week testing phase will confirm that the open API implementations that are ready are indeed standard, and thus capable of delivering open banking as the regulator intended.
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For consumers, open banking appears to be nothing more than a change of Ts and Cs and a lot of scary looking legalese around the dangers of sharing data with third parties. The communication from the banks to consumers and SMEs has been poor to date and must improve to genuinely help people understand the opportunities available as the open data future evolves, as well as how to stay safe.
The open future starts here; consumers and small business can now start to benefit from a hyper-personalised environment, with predictive and pre-emptive services that dynamically flex and flow as financial needs change, and all based on the willingness to securely share the data they generate. That is vastly different from the financial services experience to date with monolithic banking products that are mass-marketed with no consideration to the individual.
In a new world built around the smarter use of data, large holders of data such as energy and telco firms, fin-techs and the tech titans could deliver financial services either individually or through collaboration. They could anticipate spending patterns and usage, comingle data from multiple sectors to surface and satisfy un-met or under-served needs. Amazon, Facebook and others have a distinct advantage as they are designed with data at their core, with a huge incumbent user base and an ability to be at the forefront of customer engagement – while training us to adopt new services.
Read Dr. Beaumont’s thoughts on data personalization and a future where control the data we generate here.
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