Open Finance Advisors launches to help make Open Banking in Australia a reality

Open Finance Advisors launches to help make Open Banking in Australia a reality

Today, Brenton Charnley ex-CEO of TrueLayer ANZ launches Open Finance Advisors, a specialist consultancy to help Australian and global businesses make open banking and finance a reality through the Consumer Data Right (CDR).

Open Finance Advisors provides a broad range of specialist services to help businesses become Accredited Data Recipients through strategy, accreditation, use case design and discovery and implementation support.

Brenton Charnley, CEO and Founder of Open Finance Advisors said, “I am excited about continuing to support businesses develop their open banking and open finance strategies via the CDR. Open banking, and open finance more broadly, has the opportunity to revolutionise the financial services industry as we have already seen from the UK and EU under PSD2. However, at just two years old we are just getting started with open banking in Australia under the CDR.”

Despite the broad vision of the CDR, open banking in Australia is currently limited to data sharing only. As of 1 November 2022, there are only 23 active Accredited Data Recipients and 112 active Data Holder brands as reported by the ACCC.

“We really need to see more Accredited Data Recipients and use cases getting in the hands of consumers for the CDR to take off. And we are here to help make that happen. Having lived and breathed open banking and the CDR since its launch, we can help Australian and international businesses to better understand the CDR, identify how to access it, and then support them to make it a reality” Charnley said.

It is an exciting time for Open Banking in Australia with the statutory review of the CDR released in October providing recommendations for improvement to the CDR to increase participation and consultation on draft legislation on Action Initiation underway. With energy data sharing going live this month, we are entering a new era for the Consumer Data Right as participants outside of the banking industry are brought under the CDR.

“Whilst the ambition for the Consumer Data Right is to be economy wide and ultimately open up finance more broadly, we haven’t yet finished open banking. There is plenty more to do to make open banking a success in Australia. When compared to the more mature open banking market in the UK, we haven’t even scratched the surface on consumer adoption. The last two years have been all about compliance and increasing coverage on the Data Holder side which is great. Now we enter an exciting phase where use cases will come to life facilitated by technology companies, incumbent banks, and financial services businesses” Charnley said.